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THE 



EisTOEY OF ModerniEdicatioh 

AN ACCOUNT OF THE 

Course of Educational Opinion and Practice 

From the Revival of Learning 

to the Present Decade 



SAMUEL a. WILLIAMS, Ph.D. 

PROFESSOR OF THE SCIENCE AND ART OF TEACHING 
IN CORNELL UNIVERSITY 




C. W. BAEDEEN, PUBLISHER^" ^^"^'" 



SYRACUSE, N". Y. 



1892 



^i^fyJX 



Copyright, 1892, by C. W. Bardeen 



PKEFACE. 



This book has grown out of the lectures given by 
the author in Cornell University during the past six 
years, and it comprises the last half of his course on 
the history of education. There should be a place, 
not only amongst teachers, but also in a very consid- 
erable class of enlightened friends of education, for a 
work depicting in a moderate compass the rise and 
development of modern methods of instruction, the 
growth of educational systems and organizations, and 
the course of modern ideas of education as revealed in 
the works of representative men. Though much that 
may be given in such a work naturally has its impor- 
tant forerunners in far earlier ages, still the course 
of educational events since the revival of learning in 
the 15th century, has in itself such a degree of self- 
dependence as adapts it for separate treatment. Be- 
sides, it is probable that many persons who would be 
eager to know the more recent precursors of the 
present condition of education, would be less interested 
in ancient and mediseval methods and means of 
instruction, or in the ideas of education expressed by 
ancient sages ; at least until a knowledge of later 
educational history should have excited in them the 
desire for an acquaintance with the fathers of educa- 
tional efforts and thought. With this view this book 
is offered to the public. 



IV THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

The chief difficulty in its preparation has arisen 
from the abundance and complexity of the materials 
that have been presented. An attempt has been 
made, by a careful selection of truly representative 
facts and personages, by a rigid exclusion of all other 
matters however intrinsically interesting, and by treat- 
ing the several centuries from the standpoint of what 
in them seemed most characteristic, to construct a 
narrative which should be truthful and perspicuous 
without being unduly bulky. The reader will judge 
how far this attempt has been successful. 

The works to which the author has been specially 
indebted have been so frequently mentioned in the 
following pages that it seems needless to enumerate 
them here. 

A question by a judicious friend with regard to the 
statement on page 99 of the amount of Mulcaster's 
salary, called attention to the need of a remark on the 
relative purchase power of money in the 16th century 
and at present, when it was too late to introduce it in 
the proper place. Mr. Thorold Kogers, who is a good 
authority in such matters, gives the ratio of about 
twelve to one as holding good between 1480 and the 
last third of the present century. Hence, as some 
decrease of purchase power had occurred before Mul- 
caster's time, the ratio 10 to 1 has been assumed as 
approximately correct. 

At page 29, line 4 read Latin classics instead of 
" classic languages ; " also at page 90 line 8, instead 
of " arithmetic," read mathematics and astronomy. 

Ithaca, July, 1892. 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. 



9-21 



CHAPTER I. 

Preliminaries of Modern Education.— Sketcli of An- 
cient Education— Medicieval Moslem learning— Mediae- 
val culture of the Byzantines— Mediaeval universities 
of Europe, their studies and methods— Precursors of 
the Renaissance 

CHAPTER II. 

The Renaissance and Some Interesting Phases op 
Education in the 16th Century.— Effect of Geo- 
graphic discoveries and the growth of modern lan- 
guages—Effects of the revival of learning north and ^ 
south of the Alps— The Renaissance has the charac- 
ter of a classic revival— Great extension of middle- 
class education in England and Germany— School 
training regarded somewhat as a preparation for life 
—Origin of idea of universal and compulsory educa- 
tion - 23-45 

CHAPTER HI. 

Educational Opinions of the 16th Century.— Martin 
Luther— Erasmus— Vives— Ramus— Rabelais — Mon- 
taigne 46-83 

CHAPTER IV. 

Distinguished Teachers of the 16th Century.— Mel- 
anchthon— Sturm— Trotzendorf—Neander—Ascham 
— Mulcaster— The Jesuits 84-107 



VI THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

CHAPTER V. 
Some Characteristics of Education in the 17th Cen- 
tury.— Predominance of Latin for utilitarian ends — 
Influence of ecclesiasticism in education — Influence 
of the philosophers in education — Bacon — Descartes — 
Fleury — Efforts of educational reformers 108-135 

CHAPTER VI. 
Principles of the Educational Reformers.— Ob- 
stacles to their rapid acceptance 126-139 

CHAPTER VII. 
The 17th Century Reformers. — Wolfgang Ratich — 
John Amos Comenius and his works — The Port Royal- 
ists—Milton—Locke 140-196 

CHAPTER VIII. 
Female Education and Fenelon. — St. Jerome and con- 
ventual education— Port Royalists — Mme. de Main- 
tenon — Fenelon — Pedagogic works and opinions of 
Fenelon .197-216 

• CHAPTER IX. 

The Oratory of Jesus, and Beginning of American 
Education. — The Oratory in France — Bernard Lamy 
— Thomassin — Early American efforts — Founding of 
William and Mary college — New York — New Eng- 
land — Early Harvard — First school laws of Massa- 
chusetts — State of education in England, France, 
Germany, and Scotland 217-329- 

CHAPTER X. 
Characteristics of Education in the 18th Century. 
— Pietistic movement and Francke — Real school 
movement — Professional training of teachers — Rise 
of modern university spirit — Rise of new Humanism. 230-252' 

CHAPTER XI. 
Important Educational Treatises of the 18th Cen- 



TABLE OF CONTENTS. Vll 

TURY, — Rollin's Traite des Etudes— Rousseau's Emile 
—Kant 253-287 

CHAPTER XII. 

Basedow and the Philanthropinic Experiment 288-298 

CHAPTER XIII. 
Pestalozzi and His Work.— Neuhof — Leonard and 
Gertrude — Stanz — Burgdorf — Yverdun and liis Insti- 
tution—Fundamental Principles 299-316 

CHAPTER XIV. 
General Review of Education in the 18th Cen- 
tury. — England — France — Austria — Felbiger — Kin- 
dermann — Germany — Prussia — Von Rocliow — New 
England— Early text-books— New York — Colleges 
of 18tli century— University of the State of New York .317-330 

CHAPTER XV. 

Educational Characteristics op the 19th Century. 
— Great activity in literature, etc. — Herbert Spencer's 
"Education" — General diffusion of popular educa- 
tion — Froebel — Professional training of teachers — 
Supervision of schools— Industrial and Manual train- 
ing — Improvements in method — The Kindergarten — 
Discussion of relative disciplinary value of studies — 
Conclusion 331-391 



THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION 



CHAPTEE I. 

PRELIMINAKIES OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

The history of modern education has for its field 
the period which extends from the revival of learning 
in the 15th and 16th centuries, called the Eenaissance, 
down, to the times in which we ourselves are actors. 
But the Eenaissance had its inciting causes and its 
favoring circumstances in the times by which it was 
preceded ; and a highly important cause, the preserva- 
tion of the ancient Greek learning, was due to 
events which occurred several centuries earlier than 
the period of which we are to treat. Likewise much 
that is of quite vital interest to the right understand- 
ing of modern education had its origin in the past, 
and often in a remote antiquity. Educational arrange- 
ments analogous to those now existing, educational 
ideas of perennial influence among educators, and 
means of education that are still used in schools, are 
an inheritance from ancient times, and link the pres- 
ent closely with a distant past. Hence a brief survey 
of some significant facts in earlier history is an essen- 
tial preliminary to our undertaking. 

First let it be recalled that many of the Eastern 
nations, notably the Chinese, the Hindoos, the Israel- 

(9) 



10 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

iteSj and the Egyptians, had educational arrangements 
well adapted to the ideas that prevailed among them, 
and from them important elements of culture have 
descended to us. Tlie Hindoos are believed to have 
originated the decimal system of arithmetical notation 
which has been transmitted to us through Arabian 
channels. The important device of a phonic alphabet, 
long credited to the Phoenicians, has recently been 
ascribed to the Egyptians ; and the history of ancient 
Egyptian culture assumes a growing importance to 
modern education as investigation penetrates deeper 
into its dark places. 

The Athenians gave an admirable education to their 
boys, and Athens and several of the Greek colonies, 
some centuries before the Christian era, had arrange- 
ments for the higher training of youth which are the 
prototypes of our modern university idea. 

In Rome, during the reign of the earlier emperors, 
there had grown up by private initiative a series of 
schools which presents striking analogies with some 
.modern systems. 

The developing method of Socrates and the illustra- 
tive method of Christ are models after which the 
teachers of to-day might well pattern ; and educational 
ideas first expressed by Plato and Aristotle, by Seneca 
and Quintilian, and by the Greco- Roman Plutarch, 
are still current on the lips of educators, often with 
little thought of their ancient origin. 

None will need to be reminded that Greece and 
Home had, before the Christian era, developed an art 



PRELIMINAEIES OF MODERN EDUCATION. 11 

:and a literature, which were the immediate sources of 
inspiration to the Renaissance, which were long the 
predominant means of culture in the schools of the 
modern period, and which still hold deservedly a high 
place in most institutions for higher education. After 
Grecian literature and philosophy had ceased to be 
productive, a science of grammar was originated from 
the anatomical study of language, and had attained a 
good degree of completeness in the first century A. D. 
Aristotle gave to Deductive Logic the form which it 
has retained until the present century. Ehetoric, in 
the hands of Quintilian, took the form of a singularly 
complete science, and Euclid wrought his own work 
and that of his predecessors into a treatise on Geome- 
try which has never been wholly superseded. 

In all these subjects of school instruction the 
modern period is deeply indebted to the ancient 
world ; in the mathematics aside from Geometry, and 
in the sciences of nature, however, it owes compara- 
tively little to the ancients ; although treatises on 
Geography, Astronomy, and Natural History, which 
for many centuries were authoritative, were written 
by men like Strabo, Ptolemy, Aristotle, and Pliny. 

To the downfall of the Roman empire succeeded in 
Western Europe six centuries of social confusion, 
lawless violence, and consequent dense ignorance. 
Learning had little encouragement save among the 
clergy, many of whom, however, were grossly ignor- 
ant ; books, which could be multiplied only by the 
elow process of copying on expensive materials, were 



12 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

scarce and enormously dear ; the Latin language in 
which books were written, became progressively unin- 
telligible to the various nationalities which slowly 
segregated themselves from the seething mass of bar- 
barian invaders ; and, during this period of darkness,, 
the means of culture found their chief refuge in the 
monasteries. 

During this deplorable period, however, learning 
elsewhere than in Western Europe was not left wholly 
without witness ; otherwise our present condition 
would in all human probability be much less favorable 
than it is. In the Eastern Empire and amongst the fol- 
lowers of Mohammed learning flourished whilst Chris- 
tian Europe was sunk in ignorance. Both drew their 
inspiration from the old Greek culture, the former 
directly, the latter through translation. 

The Moslem learning which sprang into prominence 
early in the 8th century, spread rapidly through 
Northern Africa and penetrated into Spain, where a 
brilliant Moslem empire existed until the 15th cen- 
tury. The arts and industries flourished ; a rich im- 
aginative literature took on such proportions that the 
library of one of the caliphs is said to have had 400,- 
000 volumes ; schools abounded, and the elements of 
knowledge reached every household ; universities 
were founded of such note that in the 10th and 11th 
centuries ambitious youth from Italy and Gaul resorted 
thither, undeterred by the tales of necromancy and 
devil's lore which ignorant Europe believed of the 
arts cultivated by Moslem Spain ; and influences 



PRELIMINARIES OF MODERN EDUCATION. 13 

thence derived not only aided to stimulate the growth 
of universities in Europe in the 12th century, but 
also seem to have impressed themselves in some degree 
on tliQform of the instruction there given. 

The Byzantine Greeks whose literary centre w^as 
Constantinople, were the inheritors of the old Greek 
culture. This culture suffered an eclipse during the 
7th and 8th centuries in consequence of fierce dynas- 
tic and theological struggles, but in the 9th century 
it revived afresh, and for more than six centuries, 
under the fostering care of the emperors, it displayed 
that kind of vigor which consists rather in marking 
time than in advancing. In other words, the Byzan- 
tines showed no capacity for original production ; but 
they industriously collected the precious monuments 
•of their ancestral philosophy and literature, multi- 
plied them by transcription, and finally, in the llrth 
and 15tli centuries, furnished them unchanged to 
Italy where they became the inspiring cause of the 
Renaissance and of the beginnings of modern educa- 
tion. It may be said that Sir Walter Scott in his 
■Count Robert of Paris gives a lively picture of the 
splendors of Constantinople and of its literary dilet- 
tantism at the time of the crusades. 

The Mediseval Universities of Europe, some knowl- 
-edge of which is essential for our purpose, were the 
unique product of an intellectual uprising which 
began near the close of the lltli century, and which 
had several causal antecedents of which one has been 
mentioned above. The earliest of them, those of 



14: THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

Bologna, Paris, and Oxford, sprang from obscure be- 
ginnings, so obscure indeed that it is impossible to 
assign any exact date to their origin : they were not 
founded but grew out of the intellectual wants of the 
times. Those founded later by popes and princes,, 
including all the earlier universities of Germany, 
generally modeled themselves on the University of 
Paris which was considered the " mother of universi- 
ties." We have no present need to consider the 
structure and the privileges of these venerable repub- 
lics of letters. What alone concerns us is their studies 
and their methods of instruction. 

The studies of the universities were usually classed 
as the Sciences, and the Arts : at the head of the first 
stood Theology including the Scholastic Philosophy,, 
followed by Jurisprudence and Medicine : by the 
term Arts, was intended the seven liberal arts of the 
Middle Ages, but chiefly the Trivium, i. e.. Grammar^ 
Rhetoric, and Logic, all three of which were pre- 
sented in their most formal and barren aspects, and 
illustrated by passages from some of the classical 
Poman authors. The Sciences were pursued in 
treatises which in medicine had come from the Greeks 
or Moors, in Law, from the Pomans or the papal de- 
cisions, and in Theology-Philosophy, from the earlier 
Schoolmen. These were treated as authoritative: 
they were studied, and might be illustrated, explained,, 
and commented on, but not criticised nor doubted. 

In considering the methods of the universities it 
must be remembered that printing was not yet in- 



PRELIMINARIES OF MODERN EDUCATION. 15 

vented, and that hence books were very scarce and 
very dear. Hence the metliod of teaching was of 
necessity oral. The professor read^ i. e., dictated his 
author with his own comments and explanations if he 
chose to make them, and the students copied verbatim. 
Hence progress was necessarily slow. A more pecul- 
iar and characteristic feature of their method was the 
practice of disputation which, borrowed from the 
Moorish schools, and applied to the definitions and 
subtle distinctions of the scholastic philosophy and 
theology, soon invaded every department of study in 
universities, and spread to whatever lower schools ex- 
isted. It grew to be counted as of the very essence of 
teaching : students and teachers prided themselves on 
their ability to sustain with equal ease either side of 
any question, always within the limits of their au- 
thorities : and these verbal duels were conducted 
with such heat, tliat the opposing sides were apt to 
come to blows unless separated by barriers. This 
practice of disputation doubtless trained men to 
skill in reasoning, confirmed their grasp of subjects, 
and made them acute and dextrous in subtle verbal 
distinctions rather than profound ; but it must have 
tended powerfully to unsettle men's convictions that 
there can be any absolute truth, since all might be 
explained and refined away. 

In these methods and studies, both schools and uni- 
versities were confirmed and fixed by four centuries 
of undisputed use. Entrenched thus in unalterable 
prepossessions, they naturally became the most for- 



16 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

iiiidable opponents of the Renaissance, and were long 
the most serious obstacles to the spread of the 'New 
Learning ; for this reason it has been needful that 
they should here be thus brie% described. 

Guizot in his History of Civilization in Europe,* 
in stating the causes which produced the rapid ad- 
vances in European civilization during the centuries 
succeeding the 15th, has also most clearly stated the 
immediate precursors of the educational Renaissance. 
These were, — (1) the strengthening of the powers of 
the central governments in all European states, thus 
assuring a greater measure of order and legal security 
for persons and property : (2) the vain attempts at 
ecclesiastical reform through church councils, and the 
equally abortive efforts for popular religious reform, 
which, through the suppression of outward signs of 
discontent consequent on their failure, possibly made 
the outbreak that ensued more violent : (3) the use in 
the oflicial intercourse among nations of the arts of 
diplomacy, which now came into vogue, and which, 
by demanding a knowledge of other nationalities as 
to their history, their resources, and their modes of 
living and thinking, prompted men to a kind of cul- 
ture heretofore unknown and thus became a powerful 
means of enlightenment : (4) the important inven- 
tions which came into active use in the 15th century, 
of wdiicli the most interesting to us is the art of print- 
ing: and (5) the revival of interest in the study 
of the Greek classics which, beginning in Italy, 

* Lecture XI. 



PRELIMINARIES OF MODERN EDTTCATION. 



lY 



spread thence to other European countries, recalling 
the minds of men to a communion with the past 
intellectual achievements of their race, and inciting 
them to a freedom of thought and an activity of 
personal investigation that was fraught with the most 
vital consequences to the future of learning. 

The first two of these facts are of interest to the 
student of educational history chiefly because they 
afforded conditions favorable to the spread of learn- 
ing, — the first because it assured a degree of social 
order without which learning must languish, and the 
second because religious unrest tended to free men's 
minds from the bonds of mere authority by which 
all real progress in science had hitherto been pre- 
vented. The needs created by the growth of di- 
plomacy have an interest of a different kind, since 
thus was promoted a cultivation of branches hitherto 
greatly neglected, prominent among which were 
history, geography, and international ethics. 

It would be difiicalt for us to conceive how great a 
change in the fortunes of education was wrought by 
tlie invention of ])rinting, and by the introduction of 
linen paper into common use which occured at nearly 
the same time."^ Heretofore, not only had transcrip- 
tion been slow and costly, but the fabric on which to 
write had also been costly, both causes preventing a 
rapid multiplication of books. Henceforth all this 
was changed ; and ready access to books affected edu- 
cation in all classes of schools in many ways. It 

*Hanam. Middle Ages, C. IX, part 2d. 



18 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

made necessary a radical change in the method of 
teaching, since dictation was no longer necessary : it 
released the students from copying, changed their use 
of memory to an exercise of understanding, and 
greatly lessened the time needed for acquiring knowl- 
edge : it demanded from professors more originality 
of work, since through print their thoughts might 
readily be compared with those of others : finally, it 
rendered the clientage of universities more largely 
local, by making it unnecessary for students to travel 
far to hear the words of some famous professor. 

How rapidly the new invention came into use is 
shown by the fact, vouched for by Mr. Green, ^ that 
by the beginning of tlie 16th century 10,000 editions 
of books and pamphlets had been issued, including 
the chief Latin authors, and that in the two succeeding 
decades all the notable Greek authors had also been 
printed. It needs but a brief consideration to see the 
bearing of this fact upon the multiplication of read- 
ers, and the great stimulus it must have given to edu- 
cation and to efforts to remove all needless hindrances 
from the path of knowledge by the improvement of 
methods of instruction. 

But while the invention of printing in many ways 
removed a tremendous hindrance to the advancement 
of learning, there can be no doubt that the last fact 
stated by Guizot was the immediate cause of the re- 
markable intellectual movement which ushered in the 
Kenaissance and the dawn of modern education. The 

* Short History of the English People, C. VI., Sec. IV. 



PRELIMINARIES OF MODERN EDUCATION. 19 

renewal of acquaintance with the ancient master- 
pieces of literary art, first gave to the new invention 
a worthy employment, while it stirred the souls of 
men by nobler objects than mere scholastic rubbish. 

"We have seen in a recent paragraph that during the 
Middle Ages the Eastern Empire played the humble 
but useful part of a conservator of the old Greek lan- 
guage and literature ; and that it became a kind of 
enchanted castle in which great authors slept for long 
centuries, awaiting the touch of some magician's wand 
to summon them to renewed life, activity, and influ- 
ence. The time for awakening came about the mid- 
dle of the 14th century ; and it was permitted to 
Petrarch and Boccacio first to reverse the wand, and 
to read backwards the enthralling spell. 

A learned but dirty, hideous, and withal fickle 
Greek scholar, Leo Pilatus by name, taught Greek to 
Boccacio and read Homer with him, thus inspiring 
him with a love for Greek literature. Some years 
earlier, another Greek scholar had undertaken the 
same office for Petrarch, but his sudden death had 
brought his lessons to an untimely end, so that later, 
in thanking a friend for a copy of Homer as an in- 
valuable present, Petrarch said bitterly, "But alas! 
what shall I do now ? To me Homer is dumb, or 
rather I am deaf for him." But though shut out from 
enjoying the great Greek authors, Petrarch realized 
their value ; and moreover in his own field of learn- 
ing, he did a great service in bringing to renewed 
notice the forgotten works of the great Pomans. In, 



20 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

this last work, Dante likewise gave efficient aid. Thus 
this triad of famous Italians gave the first impulse to 
a better learning. 

The enduring enthusiasm for Greek literature which 
made Italy the mother land of the Renaissance, dates, 
however, from the coming into Italy of Manuel Chrys- 
oloras, a noble and learned Greek statesman, who 
was also versed in Latin. He lectured on Greek liter- 
ature, at first in Florence, and then in Pavia, Yenice, 
and Rome, arousing everywhere the deepest interest. 
He was followed later by many Greek emigrants who 
sought refuge in Italy from the terror of the conquer- 
ing Turks, and who brought with them valuable manu- 
scripts, spreading '' the sense but not the spirit of the 
Greek classics.^' * 

A taste for the collection of Greek manuscripts 
now sprang up, and the search for them was prosecuted 
with ardor not only by scholars, but also and at great 
expense by the Medici and by some of the popes. 
The enthusiasm for Greek literature centered especial- 
1}^ in Florence, which became for Europe a seminary 
for Greek and Latin learning whence it spread to 
other countries, — Greek being introduced at Oxford 
near the close of the 16th century by Linacer and 
Groceyne. 

During the 15th century, however, despite the grow- 
ing enthusiasm, the sole work was merely preparative, 
to collect the new-found treasures, to comment on 
them, to imitate them, — in short to pave the way for 

* See Gibbon's Rome, C. LXVI for an account of the classic revival. 



PKELIMINAEIES OF MODERN EDUCATION. 21 

really productive effort by thoroughly imbibing the 
antique spirit. A picture not more vivid than truth- 
ful, of the nature and direction of the intellectual life 
which animated Florence in this century, may be 
found in George Eliot's " Romola." It was a time of 
passage from the old to the new, lingering still in the 
old by its lack of intellectual freedom and initiative, 
yet looking forward ardently to the new era for which 
it was making the needful preparation. 

The five facts that have just been presented together 
with their implications, may be regarded as the fore- 
runners of that extraordinary intellectual revolution 
which is called the Renaissance, and which may ap- 
proximately be dated from the beginning of the 16th 
century. These were either its inciting causes or 
afforded to it favorable conditions ; while the existence, 
the favorite studies, and the methods of the older 
schools and universities reveal to us its most formid- 
able future obstacles. With these facts clearly appre- 
hended, we have gained the standpoint necessary for 
the consideration of the course and fortunes of mod- 
ern education. 



CHAPTEK II. 

THE RENAISSANCE, AND SOME INTERESTING PHASES OF 
EDUCATION IN THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 

We have stated in the preceding chapter the most 
important antecedents of tlie Renaissance. Two other 
facts, however, claim our attention here, of which one 
-coincided with the beginning of the Renaissance, and 
the other gained increased importance at about the 
same period. These are the great geographical discov- 
eries which occurred at the end of the 15th century, 
and the literary growth of modern languages. 

It can hardly be doubted that the discovery of a sea 
route to the East Indies around the Cape of Good 
Hope, and of that hitherto unknown continent, 
America, across the Atlantic, must have given a great 
new impulse to the minds of men, already predisposed 
by other causes to novel forms of activity. It not 
only enlarged their ideas of the globe which they 
inhabited, but also, by putting them in an attitude of 
eager expectancy as to the results of so great revela- 
tions, it must have been most unfavorable to sub- 
mission to mere authorative dicta. For geographic 
discovery is so closely allied to physical research, that it 
could hardly fail to incite men to a free investigation 
of the phenomena of nature, undeterred by the 
authority even of such names as Aristotle and Pliny, 
Strabo and Ptolemy. 

(33) 



THE RENAISSANCE. 23 

Of even greater moment, both as a precursor and 
as an attendant of the great revival of learning, was 
the growing literary use and consequent settlement of 
form of the several great national languages of Europe. 
By the end of the 15th century the forms of these lan- 
guages had become so far settled, that the writings of 
the 15th century present no considerable difficulties to 
students of the several tongues at the present day. 
The significance of this fact for the educational 
history of the Renaissance, lies in this, that however 
great may be the culture derived from the study of 
literature and science embodied in tongues like the 
Greek and Latin which are strange to the speech of 
the people, it can never penetrate to any considerable 
depth, nor exert any very perceptible influence on 
the vast masses of the people, until they have access 
to its sources in the familiar forms of their own 
vernacular. 

It is true that at the beginning of the 16th century 
Latin was still almost exclusively used among the 
learned, and that creditable efforts were made to free 
it from mediaeval corruptions ; but parallel with this 
fact were works like those of Luther, of Rabelais, of 
Montaigne, of Thomas More, and many other authors, 
with vernacular translations of the Scriptures, which 
reached a vastly larger class of readers than the very 
learned, — a class, too, which as time passed was ever 
on the increase, and which has made its demands for 
the use of the vernacular in instruction ever more 
widely influental, until to-day the easy use of Latin is 



24 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

confined to a meagre number of scholars, and the 
attempt to convey information by its means would be 
counted an anomaly, even in the Universities. 

To the literary growth of modern languages and 
their wide use in schools of all classes may, without 
doubt, be ascribed the enormously greater, more per- 
vasive, and more permanent effects which have fol- 
lowed in the train of the Great Eenaissance, than any 
which were achieved by the springing up of the 
mediaeval universities and schools, great though their 
significance was in the times when they appeared. 

Such were the inciting and favoring causes of the 
revival of learning. At the outset it seemed destined 
to be only a classical revival, whose chief purposes 
were to be to restore the Latin tongue to somewhat 
of its early purity, and to bring again to the knowl- 
edge of the learned the literary treasures of an- 
tiquity. But deeper influences were at work, in the 
profound religious unrest which pervaded northern 
Europe, — an unrest wdiich sprang in part from the 
often irreligious and even scandalous lives of the 
clergy, in part from the loosening of the hold on the 
consciences of men of ancient dogmas and supersti- 
tions. From this unrest, it came to pass that the 
intellectual uprising presently took a wider range 
than a mere acquaintance with classic authors, and 
imitation of their excellences ; and was correlated 
with a religious revolution, which gave an intense 
bitterness to its earlier struggles, but which ended in 
approximating its later efforts to that great Humani- 



THE RENAISSANCE. 25 

tarian ideal which had been enunciated by our Savior, 
but which had been wholly lost from view for more 
than ten centuries, the conception of the infinite worth 
and perfectibility of the human personality, the natural 
correlative of which is the need of education. 

It is interesting to observe the different effects 
which the educational movement produced north and 
south of the Alps. In Italy, which was the cradle 
of the Renaissance, the religious ideas of the learned, 
both clergy and laity, reverted to infidelity and even 
to heathenism. Creeds and dogmas had so lost their 
hold upon the minds even of the clergy, that Luther 
tells us that on a visit to Rome, he heard some of the 
clergy boast that in celebrating the most sacred mys- 
tery of the Christian church, the consecration of the 
elements in the Eucharist, they secretly used words of 
most impious character. It is reported that Leo X. 
said to Cardinal Bembo, " Thou knowest how profit- 
able to us has been this fahle of Christ ; " and it is 
unfortunate that the life of this enlightened prelate 
gives no contradiction to these words, which degraded 
the faith of which he was the head to the level of a 
heathen myth. 

When such was the tone of the clergy, what won^ 
der is it that among the laity, the rankest forms of 
irreligion prevailed. Yice and crime were never more 
prevalent. Savonarola in Florence thundered against 
the tendencies of the times, but his eloquent voice was 
soon silenced by the hands of the executioner. In 
the decades immediately preceding the Reformation, 



26 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

several men succeeded each other on the papal throne, 
who were fair exponents of the character of the times. 
One of them was the father of a numerous brood of 
children ; another was the father of the infamous Bor- 
gias, of one of whom, Csesar Borgia, it was said that 
he was " a connoisseur in crime " ; still another con- 
nived at murders if he did not himself commit them ; 
of the most respectable of them, Leo X. in whose 
reign the religious outbreak began, and who was a 
man of elegant culture and a favorer of learning, Fra 
Paolo said that " he would have been a model pope 
had he had a more thorough knowledge of religious 
subjects, and more inclination to pietj, but he had 
little of either." To his court therefore resorted a 
flock of vices and shames which were welcomed if only 
they were amusing. 

While such were the attendants in Italy of the re- 
vival of classic learning, north of the Alps, and 
especially among the nations of Germanic origin, a 
widely different tone of feeling prevailed. In Eng- 
land, John Colet, first as professor at Oxford, and 
later as dean of St. Paul's, strove to make the knowl- 
edge of Greek a key to the New Testament, a basis 
for a " rational and practical religion," freed from old 
superstitions and corruptions, and embodied in " sim- 
tple forms of doctrine and confessions of faith." In 
;his efforts at reform within the church, he was sup- 
ported by the most learned of the English prelates 
with the Primate, "Warham, at their head. 

The learned and brilliant Erasmus in the !N'ether- 



THE RENAISSANCE. 27 

lands, — if indeed he can be called a citizen of any par- 
ticular country, — prepared an edition of the New 
Testament in which the " method of interpretation 
was based, not on received dogmas, but on the literal 
meaning of the text," and " the actual teaching of 
Christ was made to supersede the mysterious dogmas of 
the older ecclesiastical teachings." '' As though Christ 
taught such subtleties," says Erasmus, "subtleties 
that can scarcely be understood even by a few theo- 
logians, — or as though the strength of the Christian 
religion consists in man's ignorance of it " ! This 
■edition of the IS^ew Testament, however, in which 
Erasmus boldly expressed the wish, heretofore consid- 
ered well-nigh heretical, that the gospels and epistles 
"** were translated into all languages, so as to be read 
and understood not only by Scots and Irishmen, but 
even by Saracens and Turks," was approved by Arch- 
bishop Warham and sent " to bishop after bishop." 

In Germany the learned Hebraist, Johann Reuch- 
lin, strove by his labors on a Hebrew Grammar and 
Lexicon, to make the Hebrew scriptures accessible in 
their original sources ; and by his opposition to the 
burning of Jewish books save those that directly at- 
tacked Christianity, he gave the occasion for the bit- 
ter contest with the Dominicans of Cologne and one 
Pfferkorn, a converted Jew, in which appeared the 
famous " Epistles of Obscure Men." In these epis- 
tles, the monks and the scholastics with their barbar- 
ous Latin were treated with biting irony, and their 
ignorance and their scandalous lives were cruelly re- 



28 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

vealed to the public gaze, and made subjects of ridi- 
cule. 

I omit to speak, even in this brief way, of the ser- 
vices of Rodolph Agricola in Germany, and Alex. 
Hegius of Deventer, — the latter a teacher of Eras- 
mus, — who by the sobriety of their minds, and the 
practical direction of their efforts, in the last part of 
the 15th century, showed what should be the charac- 
ter that the Renaissance would assume in Germany. 
It should be borne in mind that all this precedes the- 
great religious revolution in Germany and England, 
and that all these men were faithful sons of the church, 
anxious chiefly for reform within the church, and for 
placing her doctrines and her practice, on a more 
scholarly as well as more religious basis. Of all these 
men, we shall have future occasion to meet again Eras- 
mus only, when we shall consider more at large his- 
eminent services to the cause of better education. 

From what has now been said, it will be seen how 
different was the early course of the Renaissance in 
Italy and in northern Europe. I have adopted thi& 
course also, that I might without undue prolixity, 
indicate its history and its tendencies, before it became 
merged in the great religious uprising in which 
Luther became the central figure. Naturally we are 
here concerned with the religious reformation only in 
BO far as it is related to the course and history of 
education. 

I think it may promote clearness of comprehension 
with regard to the history of education in the 16th 



THE RENAISSANCE. 29 

<5entiiry to state distinctly at the outset what seem tu 
me its most marked characteristics. These were, — 1, 
the determination of educational practice, and range 
of studies to the classic languages, to which Greek 
was added and to some extent Hebrew : 2, the great 
extension of middle class education, by the establish- 
ment of new Grammar schools in England, by the 
origin in Germany of many Protestant high schools, 
-and by the rise and spread of the Jesuit schools ; 3, 
that education begins to be considered as a preparation 
for real life, and hence some efforts are made to econo- 
mize the time of pupils by the use of better methods 
of instruction and of more intelligible text-books ; 
4, that in more than one quarter we find expressed 
the idea of free, universal, and compulsory education 
as the proper corollary of Christian freedom of 
thought ; 5, that for the first time in many centuries, 
we have great educational theories announced, and 
reforms proposed ; and 6, that we see springing up 
great practical teachers from whose example we may 
learn something worth noting. We will discuss these 
several topics in their order. 

1. We have said that the Kenaissance had at the 
outset the character of a classic revival. In full 
harmony with this character was the almost exclusive 
•determination of the studies in the schools and univer- 
sities to the Greek and Latin classics, so soon as they 
oame under the influence of the new spirit. This 
direction of the activity of the schools long remained 
the dominant one. The Latin classics and elegance in 



30 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

the use of the Latin tongue, naturally received the 
larger share of attention ; but Greek likewise gradu- 
ally assumed a good degree of prominence in many 
schools, Hebrew also receiving some attention. We 
have already seen that the study of Greek and Hebrew 
was urged by men like Erasmus and Eeuchlin as a 
means for gaining a reliable knowledge of Holy 
Writ and so of freeing religion from errors and super- 
stitions. It may readily be judged that the adherents 
of the Keformation would be little likely to overlook 
this object in the schools which they founded. 

It should not be supposed however that so great a 
change in the subject-matter of studies as the substi- 
tution of the Latin and Greek classics for the mediseval 
authorities, and for empty scholastic disputations, was- 
effected without a bitter struggle. In point of fact 
the struggle was both protracted and virulent in the 
ancient universities and secondary schools ; and this- 
was particulary true of those of Germany. There 
the Catholic clergy in charge of many of the schools, 
with the Dominicans who were partisans of scliolas- 
ticism at their head, and even not a few Protestants 
who clung to the authority of Aristotle, made long 
and vigorous opposition to any innovation in that to 
which they were accustomed. It was in the early 
days of this contest that the " Epistles of Obscure 
Men " to which allusion has before been made, w^ere 
written by the Humanists ; yet as late as 1570 we 
read in the life of Pierre Ramus that this famous 
Bcholar was refused temporary admission into the 



THE RENAISSANCE. 31 

teaching force of the Protestant gymnasium of Stras- 
burg because he was known to be opposed to Aristotle's- 
logic ; and that on this same account, the University 
of Heidelberg strongly opposed his temporary ap- 
pointment as professor of ethics in that institution^ 
when made by the elector palatine. 

In spite of all opposition however, Humanistic 
studies steadily made their way into the old strong- 
holds of Scholasticism ; the newly established Protes- 
tant schools and universities were in a modified sense 
humanistic from the outset ; and, following upon the 
success of this revolution in studies, the Burse system 
in the German universities died out, the lower 
degrees B. A. and A. M. fell into disuse; and the 
preparatory schools of the liberal arts were separated 
from the universities as gymnasien.* 

In English Oxford as well as on the continent, we 
are told by Green, that the Renaissance met with a 
fierce, though short-lived opposition. "The contest 
took the form of boyish frays, in which the young 
partisans and opponents of the New Learning took 
sides as Greeks and Trojans." One of the college 
preachers who had made furious tirades from the 
pulpit against the new studies, was summoned before 
the king, Henry VIII, where he alleged that he was 
carried away by the spirit. " Yes," retorted the king, 
"by the spirit not of wisdom but of folly." The 

* See Schmidt II. 377-9 for account of the opposition of old universities 
to Humanism, and the changes in them which resulted from its success. 
Also Paulsen, Gesch. des Gelehrten Unterrichts for a view more favorable 
to the universities, and less favorable to the tact of Humanists. 



32 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

bluff king was favorable to the New Learning, and was 
not disposed to permit any nonsense to hinder it ; his 
minister Wolsej founded a splendid college as its 
nursery ; and Oxford soon became, what it has since 
remained, a stronghold of Humanistic learning. 

Elsewhere, the struggle lasted fully a century — so 
tenacious of life are old ways — but when it ended, 
the New Learning was everywhere in possession of 
the schools, though in not a few, disputations con- 
tinued to hold their place. 

2. A second characteristic of the 16th century was 
the great extension of middle-class education in Eng- 
land and elsewhere. And truly this extension is some- 
thing remarkable if it bears any due proportion to the 
multiplication of grammar schools during this century. 
Thirty of these schools existed in England before 1500, 
and in the half century which follow^ed, the number 
was nearly trebled, fifty-four new ones being added. 
Harrison, an Englishman, in 15Y7 writes thus of them : 
^'Besides these universities, also there are a great 
number of Grammer Schooles, throughout the realme, 
and those verie liberallie endued for the better relief 
of pore scholers, so that there are not manie corpor- 
ate townes, now under the queene's dominion that 
have not one Gramer Schole at the least, with a suf- 
ficient living for a master and usher appointed to the 
same. There are in like manner, divers collegiat 
churches, as Windsor, Wincester, Eaton, Westminster ; 
and in those a great number of pore scholers, dailie 
maintained by the liberality of the founders, with 



THE RENAISSANCE. 33 

meat, bookes, and apparell ; from whence, after they 
have been well entered in the knowledge of the 
Xatine and Greek tongs, and rules of versifying, the 
triall whereof is made by certain apposers, yearlie ap- 
pointed to examine them, they are sent to certain es- 
peciall houses in each universitie &c." This quota- 
tion from a contemporary writer is the more interest- 
ing, because, while showing the great extension of 
secondary schools, it indicates also how thoroughly 
the l^ew Learning had taken possession of them. 

A letter written to Dean Colet about the beginning 
of the century, by one of his friends, is supposed to 
indicate tolerably well the feelings of the gentry 
about learning at that time. It represents a gentle- 
man at a dinner where learning was spoken of with 
some favor, as bursting out in this fashion : " Why 
do you talk nonsense, friend ? A curse on those 
stupid letters ! all learned men are beggars : even 
Erasmus, the most learned of all, is a beggar as I 

hear. — I swear I'd rather that my son should 

hang than study letters. For it becomes the sons of 
gentlemen to blow the horn nicely, to hunt skilfully, 
and elegantly to carry and train a hawk. But the 
study of letters should be left to the sons of rustics." 
A great change was evidently wrought in the opin- 
ions of this class during this century ; and this change 
was doubtless due to the better adaptation of studies 
to fit men to make a decent figure in the kind of life 
which they were destined to lead. 

We should not fail to observe that amongst the 



34 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

grammar schools founded in England in the first half 
of this century, was the one founded by Dean Colet 
in connection with St. Paul's, of which Lily, long 
famous among English schoolmasters, was the head, 
and which had over its gate a figure of the child 
Christ, with the legend "Hear ye him," so indicative 
of the pious spirit of its founder. He died in 1519, 
but not before he had strongly urged in a sermon 
preached before the clerical convocation, that a re- 
form in the church should begin with the chief 
clergy."^ 

Even more marked than the growth of the middle 
class schools in England, was the growth of schools of 
a like kind in Germany. Such, for example, were 
the " Particular" schools and Kloster schools of Wir- 
temberg and Saxony, the latter of which were founded 
with the estates and revenues of defunct monasteries^ 
and both organized in six progressive classes. Such 
were the Princes' schools (Fiirstenschulen) of Saxony 
with their courses of six years, beginning with the 
end of the third year of the other two schools. Such 
was the widely celebrated school of Sturm at Stras- 
burg, and those somewhat less known of Trotzendorf, 
Michael Neander, and Hieronymus Wolf. Such also 
were the justly celebrated schools of the Jesuits^ 
which sprang up and rapidly multiplied in France a& 
well as Germany, in the last half of the 16th century. 

In all of these secondary schools there was much 

* Burnet, Hist, of Ref . III. p. 39. The quotations are from '• Education 
in Early England," a publication of the Early English Text Soc. 



THE RENAISSANCE. 



35- 



which had a common character. In all, Latin pre- 
dominated with some Greek; little or no attention 
was given to mathematics; and, save a few not very 
conspicuous instances, there was an apparent neglect 
of history, geography, and natural history. Yon Rau- 
mer warns us, however, not too hastily to suppose that 
geography and history were entirely neglected because 
they are not mentioned in the list of studies, since 
very possibly they may have been used as incidental 
to the explanation of classical authors, as we know 
that they were used in this way in the schools of the 
Jesuits. 

During this century, the idea of providing free 
board and tuition for poor but talented youth, was 
widely acted upon in German secondary schools and 
also in the universities. The free places needed for 
this purpose, were endowed from the confiscated 
wealth of the monasteries ; and many cloisters were 
converted into schools which were endowed from their 
possessions. A policy of this kind had early been 
hinted at by Luther, and the state now undertook to 
use the property of the monasteries for the advance- 
ment of learning, which had nominally, at least, been 
their most useful purpose.* 

What has been said will suffice to show how wide 
an extension was given during this century to second- 
ary education in some of the states of Europe. It 
may not be out of place to remark in this connection 
that provision for popular elementary education was 

* See Paulsen Gesckiclite des Gelehrten Unterriclits, p. 160, etc. 



-36 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

not wholly neglected, at least in Germany. The 
school ordinance of Wirtemberg dating from 1559, 
provides for the instruction of boys and girls in sepa- 
rate schools, in reading, writing, religion, and church 
song. The similar school laws of Saxony which 
date from 1580 provide among other things for 
^' Deutschen schulen in which reading, writing, and 
religion are the subjects of instruction." Consider- 
ably earlier in the century, similar provisions for a 
like limited instruction, were made in many of the 
cities and small states of northern Germany, and in 
some of them separate schools for girls are mentioned.* 
3. We have now discussed two of the marked 
characteristics of educational history in the 16th cen- 
tury, viz. the determination of educational practice 
and range of studies to the Latin and Greek classics, 
with the resistance offered by the older universities 
and secondary schools to this Humanistic revolution ; 
and the great extension of secondary education in Eng- 
land and Germany, and to some extent, through the 
Jesuits, in France. Let us now consider the third fact 
which seems to me to place a somewhat distinctive mark 
upon this century, and this is that school training 
seems to have been regarded more fully as a prepara- 
tion for the successful pursuit of the interests of this 
present life, than had ever been the case since the 
fall of the E-oman Empire ; and that hence some 
intelligent efforts become apparent to economize the 

fDittes-Gescliiclite der Erziehung und des Unterriclits § 27. 



THE RENAISSANCE. ST 

time of the pupils, and to make a proper use of their 
intellectual activity. 

Even if we put entirely out of view those hindrances 
to economy of time and effort, that we have hereto- 
fore considered as existing in the Middle Ages ; — it is 
evident that the view of life and its purposes which 
prevailed in those ages, a view which made of ascetic 
observances the greatest merit, and of an utter renun- 
ciation of this world with all its interests and enjoy- 
ments the surest passport to eternal blessedness, was 
very little fitted to encourage any possible saving of 
time which was considered of little worth, and of 
energies which men were taught to think wasted 
unless directed to a contemplation of the great here- 
after. It is true that the church by its eager grasping 
after worldly power and emoluments, and that many 
of the clergy in later ages by their greedy pursuit of 
earthly possessions and sensual pleasures, tacitly de- 
nied as men the doctrines which as churchmen they 
taught ; but the mass of men are slow in their logical 
processes, and so for a time the relations of the object- 
ive examples to the subjective dogmas passed un- 
challenged, or were speciously explained away. 

But with this new intellectual awakening, men be- 
gan to reason justly that what both church and church- 
men found so interesting in this present world, must 
certainly be worthy of some attention ; — that this 
life, though it be but a period of probation for a far 
more glorious hereafter, is capable of being so wisely 
used and so rationally enjoyed as to become a profita- 



38 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

ble abiding place for those who are heirs of immortal- 
ity; and that hence youthful years and youthful 
energies are too precious to be wasted and frittered 
away unnecessarily. Hence we hear from more than 
one quarter, complaints of the loss of pupils' time. 

Erasmus inveighs against the time that is wasted in 
teaching children to read and write, which he says 
ordinary masters spend three years ?i.ndi more in doing ; 
and he sets himself, as Quintilian had done more than 
fourteen centuries earlier, to devising means for util- 
izing youthful curiosity, memory, and readiness to 
observe. Luther bitterly denounces the old system 
by which he says, " we have seen young people study 
twenty years by the antique methods, and come with 
difficulty to stammer a little Latin without knowing 
besides anything of their mother tongue." The enor- 
mous waste of time in the education of children is 
one of the things that Rabelais most bitingly satirizes 
in his grotesque account of the early education of 
Gargantua and in contrasting it with the training of 
Eudemon. It is needless to go farther in illustration 
of the awakening consciousness that the years of child- 
hood have been hitherto terribly wasted, and that it 
is needful henceforth that they be used to better pur- 
pose in a better preparation for the business of this 
present world. 

Should it be thought strange that with this lively 
and newly-aroused interest in the preparation of youth 
for careers of future usefulness, such well-nigh exclu- 
sive attention should have been given to the ancient 



THE RENAISSANCE. 39 

languages in all save the most elementary schools, we 
shall do well to consider that at that time these were 
bj far the fittest and most perfect means available for 
youthful training ; that Latin was still, not only the 
universal language of the learned, but that it was, and 
long continued to be, the sole medium through which 
desirable knowledge could be gained ; that those 
sciences on which so much stress is now wont to be laid 
as a preparation for practical life, were then in so 
infantile a state as to be rather a source of misinfor- 
mation than of reliable knowledge ; and that further- 
more, it is a question not yet definitely settled, among 
some most enlightened nations, appealing to facts in 
their own history, whether such study of languages 
and their polite literature, is not after all the most 
effective training for practical life. 

Aside from this matter of the choice of the best 
literary means available for the training of youth, the 
expedients that were in this age proposed by thought- 
ful men to economize the time and powers of the 
young, were chiefly these three, viz., a larger use and 
more thorough cultivation of the vernacular tongues, 
the employment of better and more intelligent methods 
in instruction, and the preparation and use of more 
systematic and intelligibly-worded text-books. It will 
readily be recognized that all these means were suit- 
able for the end proposed, and were likely to be 
efficient thereto if wisely and skillfully used. We 
shall be able to examine them all in some detail, when 
we come to consider the theories of education to which 



40 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

this century gave rise, under the fifth topic which we 
have proposed to ourselves. 

We may content ourselves with remarking here, 
that the need of more suitable school-books was felt 
to be so imperative, to obviate the waste of time, that 
in Germany the greatest geniuses like Keuchlin and 
Melanchthon, thought it not beneath them to com- 
pose elementary treatises for schools ; that the art of 
printing was there used most of all to multiply better 
school-books ; and that the greatest prodigy of learn- 
ing, as well as the keenest intellect of the sixteenth 
century, Erasmus, composed grammars to supersede 
books like Priscian and the barbarous Doctrinale, and 
prepared editions of classic authors, as well as selec- 
tions, which were more suitable for school use, as will 
be shown hereafter. 

4. In this century the idea of universal, and even 
GompulsoTj/ state education, which had been forcibly 
expressed by Plato, had been practiced by the Spar- 
tans and probably by the Jews, and possibly had been 
conceived as desirable by Theodulf in the days of Char- 
lemagne, — we find expressed in at least three widely 
different quarters, by Luther in 1524 and 1530, by 
Sadolet, archbishop of Carpentras in 1533, and by the 
nobility in the States Greneral at Orleans in 1560. 

In his celebrated letter to the " Magistrates of All 
Cities of Germany,"* Luther insists that the care of 
education should be an affair of state, and not be 
left solely to parents, of whom some are careless and 

* Luther als Padagog, pp. 86-106. 



THE KENAISSANCE. 41 

" like ostriches which abandon their eggs, give life to 
children and leave their nurture to chance," still more 
are ignorant of anything save care for daily bread, 
and finally others who would gladlj^ care for their 
children have neither time nor place for it. Yet the 
children when grown up, he says, will be our fellow 
citizens for weal or wo. If for weal, the state must 
care for their education, for " to tliem is the welfare 
of the state entrusted;" and this welfare does not 
depend alone on its treasures, its beautiful buildings, 
and its military equipment, but upon its having many 
learned, reasonable, and honorable citizens who know 
how to make good use of such things. It is Satan, he 
declares, who suggests to men the neglect of the educa- 
tion of children. And then, enumerating various 
public purposes for which governments freely expend 
money, as armaments, roads, and bridges, he exclaims^ 
" Why should we not with better reason spend at least 
as much for the poor needy youth, to employ a skill- 
ful man or two as schoolmasters ? " 

More than once he asks in substance the bitter 
question, — do we Germans then wish always to remain 
boobies and beasts, as our neighbors call us, and with 
good reason ? — that he may sting the national pridCy 
and rouse to effective action in founding schools to 
remove the reproach of ignorance and stupidity. " I 
demand," he says, " that the child go to school at least 
an hour or tw^o per day ; and it is expedient to select 
the most capable among them as masters of schools. 
Long enough we have wallowed in ignorance and cor- 



42 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

ruption. Long enough and too long, we have been 
the stupid Germans ; it is time that we go to work." 
So much on the right and duty of the state to give 
universal education to its people, I extract from 
Luther's vigorous plea, and much more is equally per- 
tinent. 

As to its nature, while making a strong plea for the 
ancient languages, he says, " You understand it ; we 
need in all places schools for our daughters and our 
sons, that the man may become fitted to exercise his 
calling properly, and the woman, to direct her house- 
hold aright and bring up her children like Christians." 

Let us now see on what he bases his argument for 
compulsory education. He says, "my opinion is, the 
authorities are bound to force their subjects to send 
their children to school. If they can oblige their sub- 
jects to carry spears and guns, to mount ramparts, 
and to do all military duties, with better reason can 
and ought they to force them to send their children to 
school, since here the question is of a much more ter- 
rible war against the demon Satan."* You will 
observe that he rests the right of the state to compel 
school attendance on the same basis as the conceded 
right of governments to compel their subjects to do 
military duty, and on the fact that the moral welfare 
of many children is imperilled by the ignorance or 
carelessness of parents. Luther certainly leaves us in 
(no doubt of his opinion in the matter which we are 
■considering. 

* Sermon to Pastors in 1530. 



THE RENAISSANCE. 43 

Archbishop Sadolet, a friend of Erasmus, and 
founder of several schools for children in his diocese, 
wrote a " treatise concerning the right instruction of 
free-born children " in which, besides some excellent 
counsels in other respects, he recommends that states 
should copy the Greeks in not leaving the training of 
children to parental caprice or ignorance, and says 
" as the fathers are usually blind, the laws should in- 
terpose to enlighten them, to direct their good-will, 
or in case of resistance to constrain them." We need 
not look too closely to the good prelate's Grecian 
example, unless he refers to Sparta. His opinion is 
plain in respect to the right and duty of the state to 
establish schools and enforce attendance on them. 

At the meeting of the States General of Orleans in 
1560, the memorial of the nobility to the King con- 
tains the following remarkable proposal: " May it please 
the king to levy a contribution on ecclesiastical bene- 
fices for the payment of a reasonable salary to school- 
masters and men of learning in all cities and villages, 
for the instruction of poor youth of the rural parts ; 
and to order that the fathers and mothers be bound to 
send the said children to school on penalty of a fine, 
and that they be obliged to do this by the lords and 
the ordinary judges." There is no question that this 
is a proposition for general and compulsory education, 
and that it provides what seem likely to be adequate 
means for the enforcement of compulsion. 

It is also obvious that the nobles point out an ade- 
quate source for the revenues needed to support such 



44 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

schools, — from the property of other people, with 
which men are wont to be somewhat more generous 
than with their own. Prof. Compayre explains the dis- 
position of the nobility to petition for popular instruc- 
tion as Luther had done, and their readiness to levy 
contributions on the ecclesiastical benefices for that 
purpose, as Luther had also suggested, by saying that 
a majority of the French aristocracy in the 16th cen- 
tury were imbued with the spirit of the reformation 
and favorable to the Protestant cause.* 

It is quite possible that what may seem to us a prop- 
osition for unwarranted spoliation for an object worthy 
in itself, would have been excused by those who par- 
ticipated in it, by pointing to the vast wealth accum- 
ulated in the ecclesiastical benefices, a wealth needless 
for the legitimate objects of the church and liable to 
be squandered in luxury ; and by recalling the ob- 
jects which had given color to at least a portion of 
these accumulations, viz., aid to the poor, and gratui- 
tous education as it had been given in most of the 
early monasteries. It might have been urged plausi- 
bly that the nobility purposed only to restore a por- 
tion of this wealth to its original uses. 

We have then three distinct proposals in this cen- 
tury for universal education, under direction of the 
state, and compulsory in its character. One of these 
proposals comes from the leading figure of the Refor- 
mation, a second from a prelate of the Poman church, 
and a third from a body of the French nobility. Evi- 

* Hist. Grit, des Doc. de VEdn. en France, vol. I, p. 59. 



THE RENAISSANCE. 45 

dentlj therefore, thus early in the Renaissance period, 
a perception of these great educational principles, 
which the present age is coming to regard as well- 
nigh axiomatic, had already gained a degree of accept- 
ance in theory which seems more remarkable when 
we consider how slowly they have been accepted in 
practice. 

In concluding this part of our subject, it is inter- 
esting also to remark, that the arguments with which 
Luther especially in general, and Sadolet in part, en- 
force their ideas, are the same that are urged in our 
own days for like purposes : viz., the need of univer- 
sal enlightenment as the logical correlative of that 
universal freedom of thought which is the essence of 
the Humanitarian revolution ; and the right and duty 
of the state to supervise it, enforce it, and insure it 
against the chances of parental poverty, ignorance, and 
caprice, in the interest of the entire body of citizens. 



CHAPTEE III. 

EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. 

5. The appearance in the sixteenth century of a 
number of distinguished men who have expressed 
noteworthy opinions on the means and method of 
education, is one of its most interesting characteristics ; 
not only because these men furnish valuable contribu- 
tions to the history of educational thought, but also 
because they indicate how thoroughly the human 
mind has been awakened, and how completely it has 
freed itself from the shackles of authority in the realm 
of thought. For nearly twelve centuries, from the 
days of Quintilian and Plutarch, of St. Jerome ^ and 
St. Augustine, little or nothing bearing the stamp of 
original thought on the subject of education is known 
to us. Here, as elsewhere during the Middle Ages, 
authority reigned supreme, an authority too, which 
barren and ascetic in its nature, brouglit barrenness 
into education so long as it prevailed. 

But from the beginning of the 16tli century all this 
is changed. From this time forward we shall find no 
lack of men of the brightest genius, who bestow on 
educational topics some of the choicest efforts of their 

* St. Jerome's letter to Laeta, written in the fourth century, in which 
he gives advice to a Christian mother for tlie education of her daughter, a 
descendant of the Scipios and Gracchi, and which was long influential in 
female education, may be found in Barnard's American Journal of Educa- 
tion, vol. 5, p. 549. 

(46) 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 47 

thought. Nor will these men be confined, by any 
means, to the adherents of the reformation. Indeed 
four of the six men whose opinions we shall have 
occasion to discuss in this centur}^ were Catholics, and 
one of them, Kabelais, was a monk, though not very 
ascetic in either life or writings. Thus it will appear 
that freedom of thought has penetrated everywhere in 
the track of the E-enaissance, and displays itself, as in 
other ways, so also in zeal for the improvement of 
education. 

It will be well for us to carry with us as a kind of 
guiding thought in examining the ideas of the writers 
of this age, the fact that both the fundamental princi- 
ples of right education, were now almost everywhere 
violated, as an inheritance from the past ; to wit, the 
principle of Conformity to Culture in selecting the 
best available means, and the principle of Conformity 
to Nature in the adaptation of methods and instru- 
mentalities in instruction to the end to be gained in 
the development of the young. The theories of this 
and the succeeding ages, may be regarded as efforts 
to rehabilitate both these principles in educational 
practice. 

Against scholasticism, which violated the first, 
sanctified as it was by tradition and entrenched in the 
inertia of men, a sharp but decisive battle was waged 
which continued most of this century. We shall see 
this in the denunciations of Luther, in the keen and 
polished invective of Erasmus, in the grotesque delin- 
eations of Rabelais, and in the efforts of all to give to 



48 THE HISTORY OF MODEEN EDUCATION. 

classic literature its due preponderance in tlie courses 
of the schools ; whilst the efforts of Ramus in behalf 
of Mathematics, and of Montaigne in favor of History, 
are parts of this same struggle to secure a proper con- 
formity of studies to" the best available means of 
culture. 

The efforts which are made by all the theorists to 
secure conformity to nature in the methods of impart- 
ing instruction to the young, are of the highest inter- 
est, because they are the efforts of pioneers in an 
almost untrodden field. They will be seen, not only 
in the proposal of methods seemingly better adapted 
to the ways in which the youthful intelligence works 
its way to clearness of view, but also in the prepara- 
tion of school-books better suited to the capacity of 
young minds. And should some of the expedients 
that are proposed seem to us like the half-blind grop- 
ings of men after better things, yet measurably uncer- 
tain as to how they may best be attained, Vv-e shall 
do well to remember, that at that time the laws of 
mental evolution had been very little studied, and 
that with the experience of nearly four centuries of 
theories to aid in their mastery, we of the 19th cen- 
tury cannot boast that we have gotten wholly back to 
nature in our school practice. 

Martin Luther, 1483-1546. 

Luther is so well known to all of us as to need no 
personal introduction, and we have already seen liis 
testimony as to the inefficiency of studies in causing 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 49 

waste of time, and his appeals for universal and com- 
pulsory education. He expresses his opinion of the 
merits of the existing schools with his usual frankness, 
in calling them " these stables of two-footed asses, and 
these diabolic schools " which he would wish razed to 
the ground or else by a pious metamorphosis trans- 
formed into Christian schools. The masters he depicts 
as men who themselves ignorant, were unable to teach 
others either truth or piety, much more, incapable of 
instructing themselves or others in life and the prin- 
ciples of reason ; and he asks " Whence then comes 
the evil ? From this, — that they had for all books 
only those of ignorant monks and barbarous sophists. 
They were therefore forced to become what the books 
were whence they had learned, that is perfect ignor- 
amuses. A daw does not hatch a dove, nor does a 
dullard train a prudent man." It will be seen that he 
is perfectly frank, in denouncing the lack of conform- 
ity to culture. 

Let us see what means he proposes to remedy the 
evils that he exposes. These were first the classic 
languages and some other studies which he shall pres- 
ently name himself, and second, great libraries in 
centres of population. (1) As to the first he says, the 
first thing we have to do is to cultivate the languages, 
Latin, Greek and Hebrew; "for the tongues are the 
sheaths which contain the spirit, the vases which hold 
religious verities " ; and again in another place, " If I 
had children and the means to rear them (this was 
said before his marriage to the nun, Catharine von 



50 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

Bora), I should wish them to learn, not only languages 
and History, but also Music and Mathematics." We 
see that in this, Luther would make an important 
addition to the studies to wliich that age predom- 
inantly turned, since he would add mathematics, his- 
tory, and music to their curriculum. Still farther, in 
his letters and sermons, he lays the strongest emphasis 
on E-eligion as a subject of youthful study, and he 
shows himself friendly to physical education through 
a training that may fit boys for military duties. 
Hence his curriculum of school studies will come to 
include religion, the learned languages, history, mathe- 
matics, singing, and physical training. 

In one of his sermons he also presses parents not to 
be easily satisfied with small advancement of their 
children. " Let thy son stud}^ boldly," he says, " even 
though he should sometime want bread ; so wilt thou 
give to our Lord God a fine bit of wood out of which 
He may carve a master. And think not within thy- 
self that now the common love of bread and butter so 
greatly despises the professions, and so say — ' Ha, if 
my son can read and write German, and can reckon, 
he knows quite enough, I will make him a tradesman.' 
They shall soon become so eager that they will willingly 
dig a learned man out of the earth with their fingers, 
if he lay ten ells deep." 

We should not think however that Luther pushes 
his dislike to the old scholastic ways so far as to 
despise Dialectics and Rhetoric. On the contrary, he 
values them both truly, for what they are really fit, 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 51i 

He says in his table talks, "Dialectics is a useful and 
needful art, which one should study and learn rightly, 
as he would arithmetic and reckoning. Dialectics 
reasons, but gives not the ability to him who has 
already learned it, to reason about eveiy thing : it is an 
imjplement and tool^ by whose use we can reason ele- 
gantly, correctly and systematically about what we 
Icnow and understand!'^ So also of Rhetoric, he says 
*'Fine speaking is not a strained and high-colored 
gloss of words, but is rather an elegantly adorned 
speech, which presents a matter or a subject with 
charming skill, clearly and nobly, like a beautiful 
painting." Both these arts are, it will be seen, treated 
fairly and with just discrimination, as would appear 
even more plainly could we carry quotation farther. 
(2) Besides studies which we have considered, Luther 
would extend farther the means of culture, by the 
establishment in all cities of extensive libraries, in 
which he says, "the first place should be for Annals, 
Chronicles, and Histories of all kinds which perpetuate 
the remembrance of past times. For these are won- 
derfully useful for learning and regulating the course 
of the world, yea even to behold the wonders and the 
works of God." I choose this passage from his wise 
advice as to the contents of such libraries, because it 
shows that his mention of history among the subjects 
he would have taught to children, was one of his set- 
tled convictions in regard to school subjects, at a time- 
when history was still little thought of. His list of 
books that should be excluded, w^iich he classes as 



52 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

eselsmist^ is at least amusing, as showing his disgust 
for scholastic theology. 

In regard to home and school discipline he speaks 
much and wisely, recommending a gentle firmness 
which shall assure obedience, yet wdn love. The life 
• of the school should be social as opposed to monastic 
restrictions and severity. He recommends also that 
' languages should so far as possible be learned concretely 
rather than by abstract grammar rules as heretofore. 
Hence we may see that Luther enters little upon con- 
formity to nature. His effort, aside from religion, 
was for conformity to culture. 

Erasmus, 1467-1536. 

Erasmus, the most famous scholar of the sixteenth 
century, was born out of wedlock at Rotterdam, prob- 
ably in 1467, and at the age of twelve was sent to 
Deventer, where under the learned Hegius, he studied 
the Latin classics with such ardor as to commit to 
memory Yirgil, Horace and Terence, besides learning 
a little Greek. Both his parents dying when he was 
not yet fourteen, he was left in the hands of guardians 
who desired to make him a monk that they might 
share his small patrimony. The boy made a stout 
resistance, but finally took the vow^s, lured by the 
prospect of a chance for quiet study for which he had 
a strong taste. Later he was ordained to the priest- 
hood, but led a somewhat wandering life, visiting 
many cities where the rising fame of his great learn- 
dng won him many friends. 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 53^^' 

He mastered Greek by his own unaided efforts, for 
which language he had so eager a desire that he said 
" when I get money I will first buy Greek books, and 
then clothing." He became especially famous for his 
pure and elegant Latin ; for his keen critical acumen 
and literary taste; for his sharp and witty criticisms 
both of scholasticism and of those who imitated Cicero 
mform but not in substance ; and for his bitter hatred 
of the monks, whose cheated victim he had been, 
whose life he had for five years shared, and from 
whose vows he had been freed by the pope. 

He prepared a fi-ne edition of the New Testament, 
some passages from the introduction to which have 
been already quoted, and which is said to have been an 
influential factor in the Reformation ; yet he had little 
sympathy with Luther, refused his support to the 
E-eformation, and acknowledged that he had no taste 
for martyrdom. He prepared the materials for im- 
proving classic scholarship, by good editions of authors,, 
by simplified Grammars, by translations of Greek 
authors into Latin that they might be made more gen- 
erally accessible, and by his collection of 4200 Adages 
with their exemplification, exposition, and illustration. 
He was also author of other works of which his Collo- 
quies are the most famous. 

He gained the reputation of being the most profound 
scholar and the keenest satirical genius of his time, 
and at the outbreak of the religious reformation, his 
position in the world of letters was an imperial one. 
He was sought after by many universities ; literary 



•54 THE HISTOKY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

aspirants laid their productions at his feet, as the 
supreme arbiter of reputations; and his word was 
the law of all Humanists. But he was a man of peace, 
and believed that the reforms which he desired in 
letters and religion could be peacefully brought about 
within the ancient church. Hence he was little fitted 
for the troubled times in which his last years were 
passed. His influence declined, and he sank into a 
comparative neglect which was little to his taste. He 
died at Basel in 1536, a man who had long been with- 
out a country, and who declared indeed that " those 
initiated to the worship of the muses have all the 
same fatherland." 

(1) While Erasmus labored effectively for both 
branches of that educational reform which this age 
needed, his services in promoting conformity to cul- 
ture were peculiarly great. From his reputation for 
vast learning, from his mastery of all the resources of 
language and style, from his critical skill and his com- 
mand of argumentative sarcasm, he was specially 
equipped to enter effectively into the two-fold contest 
that had now to be waged. On the one hand he 
fought against Scholasticism which was entrenched in 
many of the universities and secondary schools, and 
which he strove to overthrow, not only by revealing 
its absurdities, but also, with the true spirit of con- 
structive criticism, by substituting the polite liter- 
ature of antiquity in instruction, in place of the bald 
epitomes, and barbarous and tasteless crudities, which 
^were all that scholasticism had to offer. On the other 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 55 

hand, he contended against the empty imitations of 
the hypercritical Ciceronians, who had mistaken the 
form of antiquity for its essential sjpirit^ and who 
compassed heaven and earth to collect and use the very 
words and forms of expression of Cicero, forgetting 
that Cicero had used language as a vehicle for the 
ideas which were current in his time, and which there- 
fore differed in many essential respects from those 
which were of interest to men living nearly sixteen 
centuries later. 

Into this double crusade he entered as a kind of 
free lance, with all the energy of his peculiar charac- 
ter ; and, by his witty polemic, by his critical editions 
of authors, by his translation of Greek works into the 
better-understood Latin, and by his simplification of 
Grammars and Lexicons, he did more than any other 
man of his age to promote the triumph of the classic 
revival. 

It is to be observed that his preoccupation is wholly 
with literature, with grammar as an imjpleinent^ and 
with exposition of Greek and Latin literature as the 
best available means of intellectual culture. He 
would have these mastered by the memory, indeed ; 
but he differs vitally from the spirit that he criticizes, 
in the emphasis which he lays, on the necessity of 
freedom of thought and of deep meditation by the 
pupil on what he learns, and on the need of training 
youth to early self-direction and self-activity. 

He not only desired that the avenues to the things 
then most worthy of being known, should be laid open ; 



56 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

but, unlike some of his contemporaries, lie would open 
them freely to the greatest number possible, to women 
as well as to men. To this end were intended his Greek 
translations and his collection of illustrated Adages, 
as well as his already-quoted desire that the Scriptures 
should be made accessible to all in their vernacular 
speech. He vigorously denounces the thoughtlessness 
of parents who neglect the education of their children, 
while laboring diligently to win fortunes for them. 
" What profit," he exclaims, '' or what honor will so 
much wealth bring to them, if they know not how to 
use it ! — If he for whom you amass this fortune has 
been well trained, this is an instrument which you 
furnish for his virtues ; but if his spirit is untutored 
and gross, what have you done but to furnish him 
means to do ill and to be criminal ? " 

Finally Erasmus did an important service, for pro- 
moting the triumph of the best means of culture 
over ancient prejudice, by reconciling profane letters 
with the genuine spirit of Christianity, its Humani- 
tarian spirit. In that age, even more than in most 
ages in which knowledge and science are making rapid 
advances, it was needful to overcome the scruples of 
a great number of timid souls who feared what might 
be the results of any innovation in the means of cul- 
ture, on the Christian faith. Such men are met with 
in all periods, men who seem to fear that truth, and 
especially Christian truth, is of so fragile materials as 
to be unable to endure the contact of new ideas. 
They were especially numerous in the 16th century ; 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 57 

and by silencing and dispelling their fears, through 
the demonstration that what is really vital in Christi- 
anity has nothing to fear from any good literature or 
useful science, Erasmus did much to aid the success 
of the New Learning, and "to render fruitful that 
meeting of the antique and the Christian spirit from 
which sprung our modern civilization.""^ 

Let us now see what Erasmus proposes, to improve 
the methods of education and to bring them into a 
closer conformity with nature. 

{a) He urges strongly, like Quintilian, the judicious 
utilization of childhood, when memory is most plastic 
and impressions most indelible, and when the child 
may learn most readily the germs of many things 
which are highly useful in mature life. Thus, he 
thinks, those more mature years may be economized, 
whilst the child may be guarded from vices into which 
his innate activity, if not wisely directed, might lead 
him. Hence he combats as false the idea that chil- 
dren should do no study until they are seven years of 
age; yet care should be taken, he thinks, that they be 
not overtasked, and that whatever they learn should 
be so kindly presented as to be a pleasure. Lie would 
have especial care given during these early years to 
morals and manners, and to acquiring a pure and 
choice use of language, to a lack of which he rightly 
attributes many later defects in judgment and in abil- 
ity to acquire the sciences. Now, putting aside the 
idea of study which Erasmus evidently desires to im- 

* Feugere Vie d'Erasme, p. 454. 



58 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

press, all this is applicable to Kindergarten efforts, and 
clearly expresses much of their substance and spirit. 
(h) Again, he insists that all the efforts demanded 
of children should be carefully graduated and adapted 
to their powers ; and that they should be made as far 
as possible attractive, yet without neglecting the es- 
sential difference of work and plav. See how he pre- 
sents this idea : " In like manner as the body in early 
years is nourished by small portions given at intervals, 
so the mind of the child should be nourished with 
knowledge adapted to his weakness, and presented 
little by little in an attractive manner. Thus he pre- 
pares himself for more serious tasks, while being 
sensible of no fatigue ; for the continued and kindly 
presented effort, while costing much less, assures prog- 
ress and gives finally the same results. But there are 
people who wish that children become men in a day : 
they take no account of age, and measure the strength 
of those tender minds by their own. From the first, 
they press them with rigour, expect everything from 
them, frown if the child does not answer their expec- 
tations, and are excited as if they had to do with 
men, forgetting doubtless that they were once children 
themselves." To such unreasonable teachers he ad- 
dresses the admonition of Pliny, — "Eemember that 
this is a child, and that thou once wast one." Here we 
have clearly and forcibly expressed the idea which has 
occupied a large share of the attention of wise school- 
men in our own times, the due gradation of studies 
and their adaptation to the capabilities of the growing 
mind. 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 69 

(c) The protest of Erasmus against the brutality of 
"discipline, then everywhere prevalent, as defeating 
its own ends, has already been mentioned. 

(d) Let us finally observe what he proposes to ren- 
der the acquisition of knowledge easy and agreeable. 
It will be noted here that he advises objective meth- 
ods for teaching reading, which he complains that 
teachers take three or more years in doing. The 
expedient of using letters cut from ivory was doubtless 
suggested by Quintilian ; but to this he adds others 
which appeal to well-known inclinations of childhood, 
such as making letters from dainties and permitting 
the child who names them rightly to eat them, or 
giving a prize to the one who is most successful in 
shooting the letters with arrows, and naming them 
rightly when hit. It is significant also that in criti- 
cising some current method of teaching the alphabet, 
he objects to it on the ground that it is an attempt to 
teach the unhiown hy that which is still less hnown. 

His chief interest is turned, as has been said, to the 
-study of languages; but in this, while agreeing " that 
■the elements of grammar are at the outset very dry, 
and more necessary than agreeable," he suggests tliat 
the skill of the teacher should here spare the child a 
^ood part of repulsive labor, especially by limiting 
acquisition to what is simplest and most needful ; and 
he derides the needless complications and difficulties 
with which the brain of the child is puzzled, by hav- 
ing subjects presented prematurely or in bad form 
■or of a wholly useless character. Declaring that the 



60 THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

study of things is more profitable than that of words^. 
he gives some pLace to History, Geography and 
ISTatural History, but only as auxiliaries to literature, 
that it may be the better understood. He also pro- 
poses for pupils, exercises in composition based on 
subjects borrowed from real life and from the child's 
own experience ; and though some of the subjects 
named by his biographer Feugere, argue a curious 
idea of the experience of children, the idea is none 
the less good, because of its imperfect execution. 

Finally he proposes to make the mastery of Greek 
and Latin literature easier and more agreeable, by 
arranging the authors, both poetic and prose, in the 
order of the relative difficulty which they will be 
likely to present to learners. His arrangement does 
not entirely agree with modern practice ; but this 
consummate scholar had certainly earned the right to 
have an opinion in a matter of this kind ; and his 
attempt was certainly also a noteworthy one in an age 
when such questions as proportioning the difficulties 
of subjects to the capacity and stage of advancement 
of pupils, had not yet been counted worthy of the 
attention of scholars.* 

(jiovanno LiidoTico Tives, 1492-1540. 

Yives, born 1492 at Valencia in Spain, friend of 
Erasmus and Sir Thomas More who looked upon him 
as a prodigy, lecturing with acceptance at Oxford and 

* The order in which Erasmus suggests that Greek and Latin authors 
should he read, may be found in Compayre— ' ' Doctrines de 1' Education en 
France." Vol. I., p. 128. 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 61 

Paris, author of several pedagogic treatises, and dying 
in 15 iO, and who is called by Schmidt one of the 
most eminent pedagogues of his age, ouglit not to be 
wholly unmentioned in a history of education, though 
liis name has sunk into some obscurity. He agrees 
with Erasmus in his estimate of the importance of 
education ; in regard to female education, which he 
would carry far enough to enable the reading of classic 
authors ; in the emphasis which he lays on classic 
literature as the best means of culture ; and in despis- 
ing the scholastic practices which taught boys to 
dispute before they knew anything to dispute about. 
In this last connection, however, he shows himself 
more fair-minded than Ramus, presently to be men- 
tioned, in his judgment of Aristotle ; for he concedes 
his distinguished merit, while declaring that the world 
has advanced since the days of Aristotle, and that 
hence his opinions are to be examined and tested on 
their merits by the results of enlarged experience, 
like those of any other man, — an opinion which to a 
scholastic seemed a rank heresy. 

I desire to call attention only to two points in his 
pedagogical opinions. (1) His ideal of the teacher is 
-a lofty one. He should have fine scholarly attainments, 
that he may be able not only to teach, but also to 
inspire his pupils with a love of learning. He should 
have a faculty for imparting what he knows, that boys 
may learn easily, rapidly, and pleasantly. He should 
be of incorruptible morals that he may be a fit example 
for all those who come into his intimacy. He sliould 



62 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

be characterized by paternal feelings towards his 
pupils ; and should live worthy of the dignity of his 
important vocation, because fully conscious of its 
dignity. If this ideal of the teacher as he should be^ 
be compared with the teacher as he too commonly 
was in those times, and continued to be for more than 
two centuries, it will be seen how excellent it is. 

(2) The method which he recommends is far in 
advance of his age, embodying much that is best in 
our own day. For he would have all studies start 
from the pupils' standpoint of experience, and would 
have them at all times adapted to his powers of appre- 
hension. To this end they should be presented in- 
ductively, tlie rules in grammar to be derived from 
observation of examples ; the starting point in meta- 
physics to be in observation of mental phenomena ; and 
in the study of nature, he would have the pupil begin 
with the observation of nature as the true source of 
all our knowledge, just as Sir Francis Bacon later 
demanded. Thus Yives appeals from a priori theory 
and from the authority of the ancients, to actual per- 
sonal experience. 

Moreover he would have the Latin explained in the 
vernacular by the teacher, at that time a most import- 
ant innovation. It is also interesting to observe how 
clearly he distinguishes the logical order of a subject, 
from the order in which it must be presented in 
instruction that it may be rightly apprehended, — a 
distinction, it may be said, which is far from being 
observed even now by a considerable number of teach- 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 63 

ers. He says, " doubtless it is needful in the exposi- 
tion of a science to present always what is best and 
most perfect : nevertheless when we teach, it is need- 
ful to take care to offer nothing to pupils which is not 
within the range of their comprehension. The artist 
should seek perfection, and translate it into the rules of 
art; it is for each one then to strive to attain that 
perfection ; hut the master in his school should put 
himself at the level of his audience ; he will not dis- 
figure science, and will not teach falsehoods as truths; 
but he will say only things which his hearers can com- 
prehend." 

Pierre Ramus, 1515-1572, 
Pierre Eamus, born in 1515 of an ancient family, 
but which at his birth was so reduced that his father 
was a day laborer ; rising by the sheer force of talent 
to be one of the foremost men of his time ; eloquent 
professor in the College of France ; pugnacious re- 
former in the realms of science and in the university 
of which he was an ornament ; " the greatest French 
philosopher of the 16th century ; " as pedagogue, the 
author of Latin, Greek and French grammars, of a 
system of logic, and of treatises on arithmetic, geome- 
try, and algebra which were used as text-books for a 
century ; one of the earliest adherents to the Coper- 
nican system ; in philosophy, an avowed enemy to 
scholasticism with its hypotheses and fine-spun abstrac- 
tions, and to Aristotle as their representative head ; 
a contemner of mere authority, asserting reason as the 
supreme criterion of truth ; this universal genius per- 



6-i THE HISTOKY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

islied in the massacre of St. Bartholomew 1572, a 
victim "in- striking wliom," says Compayre, "his 
enemies aimed not at the Protestant ; they slew rather 
the enemy of scholastics, the adversary of the old 
methods, the indefatigable denouncer of the abuses of 
the University.^ 

His stormy career, made even more stormy than 
needful by his early attacks on Aristotle, was devoted to 
securing Conformity to Culture, by uprooting scholas- 
ticism, by reforming the plan of instruction in the 
University of Paris, and by founding Mathematics 
and a better Logic. Any contributions towards a 
conformity to nature, were wholly incidental to this 
chief effort. We will consider his services to this end 
as (1) professor, (2) promoter of the use of the verna- 
cular, (3) reformer of logic, (4) author of better gram- 
mars, and (5) reformer of the University. 

(1) As professor, he mingled eloquence and litera- 
ture with philosophy, and his lectures were so inter- 
esting as to attract great crowds to his lecture room. 
He freed philosophy from the barbarous forms of 
scholasticism. He treated studies " after the method 
of Socrates, by retrenching the superfluity of rules and 
precepts, and by seeking and illustrating their use, — 
thus making the way plain and direct to come more 
readily, not only to the knowledge, but also to the 
practice and use of the liberal arts." He endeavored 
to introduce into logic, a certain realism, by substi- 
tuting a solid and natural art for the hollow mediaeval 

*Hist. Grit. &c.,I. p. 129. 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 65 

formulas, and by conforming it to psychological prin- 
ciples. " It ought," he says, " to apply itself with all 
diligence to find what nature can do, and how she 
proceeds in the use of reason." In all things he vin- 
dicated the principle of freedom of thought. " Reason, 
he declares, ought to be the queen and mistress of 
authority." 

(2) In an age when Latin was the almost exclusive 
medium of communication among the learned, and 
when, in the colleges of the university, and in those 
of the Jesuits after they were founded, boys were 
punished for using anything but Latin even in famil- 
iar conversation. Ramus aided to combat the prejudice 
against the vernacular. He demanded a translation 
of the Bible into French. He wrote also a French 
Grammar, for the use, he says, " of an infinite number 
of choice spirits who are capable of all sciences and 
knowledge, and who yet are deprived of them from 
the difference of tongues." 

(3) His logic strove to free itself from Aristotle, 
but, says Compayre, in this effort, it really returned 
to the true logic of Aristotle, by shaking off the cor- 
ruptions of scholasticism. Its great novelty was the 
introduction of examjples. " To have the real laws of 
logic," he says, " it is not enough to prattle about its 
rules in the schools, but to practise them in poets, 
orators and philosophers." It is interesting to remark 
that a century after the death of its author, in 1672, 
Milton prepared an abridgement of this work. 

(4) His various treatises on grammar had for prin- 



66 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

ciple, '' Few precepts and much use." They were 
also correct, and even elegant in form, a merit not 
usual in that age. Though they seem to have had 
little credit in France, they were largely used in Ger- 
many and Spain. In this connection it may also be 
said that his arithmetic and geometry were long 
used. 

(5) In his demands for the reform of the Univer- 
sity, he calls for a reform in the professors, in the 
expenses imposed on students, and in the subject-mat- 
ter of the professional departments. As for the pro- 
fessors, he would have them fewer and better. He 
says '' a crowd of men has arisen who w^ithout any 
choice, as well ignorant as learned, have undertaken 
to make a trade of teaching, in philosophy, medicine, 
jurisprudence, and theology. Hence has arisen the 
tempest which has laid waste all our fields." To this 
fruitful source, the excessive numbers of professors, 
often very incapable, he ascribes the crushing expenses 
to which students were subjected. Thus the expenses, 
which in arts were 55 francs, were for two years in 
medicine 881 francs, and in theology, more than 1000 
francs. Much of this went, not to professors, but for 
useless formalities in a tedious course of circumlocution. 
To remedy this, he recommended that the king pay 
the salaries of needful prof essors, and exact the money 
therefor from the monasteries, " who would," he sar- 
castically says, " esteem themselves very happy and 
greatly honored to make this expenditure, if you, (the 

ng) only commanded tliem. 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 6%' 

Furthermore he complains that the instruction in 
philosophy has been made private, thus requiring a 
needless number of professors, of whom many are in- 
ferior, and their teaching mostly an empty dispute 
about words ; that mathematics are grossly neglected 
" without which all philosophy is blind " ; that in the 
higher faculties, the professors had ceased to profess,, 
contenting themselves with being present at examin- 
ations, and even making a merit of their indolence, by 
the plea that it was better for students to learn pri- 
vately from books, whilst Kamus believed in the 
efficacy of good lecturing as an aid to students ; that 
the faculty of law had abandoned Civil Law to pay 
exclusive attention to Canon Law ; that the faculty of 
medicine neglected practical exercises, clinics, materia 
medica, and dissections, to devote themselves to the 
eternal disputes of the schools : and that in theology 
they do not study the Old and New Testament in the 
original tongues, to draw as near as may be to the 
original "Divine Light " of religion, "but rather a 
certain dung and filth of question books derived from 
a barbarism elsewhere unknown " ; besides which he 
says they give insufficient attention to declamations 
and sermons. 

A considerable extract from this vigorous indict- 
ment of the university has seemed to be here in place,, 
not merely as indicating the educational views of 
Ramus, but because it gives an inside view of the kind 
of instruction then in vogue in the several faculties. 
The unsparing tone in which he criticises abuses also- 



68 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

leaves little reason for surprise that he raised against 
himself a swarm of enemies whose sinecures he at- 
tacked, and who, like angry hornets, seized tlie first 
opportunity to sting him to death. 

The efforts of Earn us to secure conformity to the 
best means of culture then available, did not cease 
even with his death; for by his will he created an 
endowment for a chair of mathematics in the College 
Koyal, which for more than two centuries was known 
as the chair of Bamus, which every three years was 
thrown open to the free competition of all mathema- 
ticians, and which gave to France a number of famous 
geometers. As a reformer of logic and promoter of 
mathematics, his name, after his death, became the 
distinguishing badge of a series of illustrious philoso- 
phers, who were known as Ramists in their devotion 
to the deductive method. 

An interesting account of this striking personality 
may be found in Waddington's Yie de llamus, from 
which the materials for this sketch have been in the 
main derived. Also Professor Compayre, in his " His- 
toire Critique des Doctrines de I'Education en France," 
Vol. I. gives a charming sketch of Ramus, of which a 
translation appears in the 30th volume of Barnard's 
Journal of Education. 

Francois Rabelais, 1495-1553. 

Francois Rabelais, born son of a French inn-keeper 
about the year 1495, or as it is sometimes said in 1483, 
and counted by Coleridge "one of the boldest and 
deepest thinkers of his age," was bred a Franciscan 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 6^ 

monk ; but giving offence to his brethren, he was im- 
prisoned by them ; and when released through the 
intercession of his friends, he was transferred to the 
order of Benedictines. Powerful friends withdrew 
him from his monastic seclusion ; he became profes- 
sor of medicine in Montpellier, and later, reviser and 
corrector of text in a printing house. Being a man 
of deep and far-reaching thought in times when such 
thoughts were dangerous commodities to handle, he 
was led, in the words of Prof. Morlej, " to the con- 
ception of a fantastic work through which he might, 
in times when men thought boldly at the peril of their 
lives, speak home and glance on to the higher future of 
humanity, while he professed only to shake the bells 
upon his foolscap." 

This work is the widely famed " Life of Gargantua 
and the Heroic Deeds of Pantagruel." The hero is 
Gargantua, an enormous giant, of whose vast size we 
gain some intimation by the number of thousand ells 
of cloth that go to the manufacture of his various gar- 
ments ; and all in which he is concerned is conceived 
on the same vast scale, even to the studious labors which 
he performs. Under the guise of this gigantic being 
and his travels and adventures, with those of his 
equally enormous son, Pantagruel, Pabelais contrives 
without much danger to himself, to convey his ideas 
of the men and things of his own time, and his hopes 
for the future; and when he has uttered some spe- 
cially daring idea, or some bold sarcasm on existing 
institutions, with a dextrous turn, the grave moralist 



'70 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

disappears, and we see in his place only the good-na- 
tured grin of the merry Harlequin. Who would think 
to call to serious account a harmless jester, amusing 
himself and the world after the manner of his craft, 
even if many of his jests bite to the quick ! Under 
his conveniently grotesque disguise, therefore, Rabelais 
has contrived to become with impunity the keenest 
and wisest critic of his own times, and the inspired 
prophet of a better future. 

"What solely interests us here, is his biting satire of 
the scholastic education which then prevailed and of 
the many absurdities connected with it ; and his theo- 
retic views of what a right education should be. In 
these, under his grotesque mask, he is in full harmony 
with Erasmus and Yives ; but he goes much farther 
than either of them in the direction of modern ideas, 
in regard to the proper subject-matter of education, 
as will presently appear. 

His gigantic hero is put to school to a. scholastic ; 
his studies, his scholarly efforts, and his sports are 
amusingly related ;* and the results of this schooling 
have a sarcastic emphasis given to them, when after 
fifty-five years more or less (for Rabelais is minute to 
months and days) given to this kind of training, its 
awkward, bashful, and helpless victim, ignorant of all 
that he should know, is brought into contrast with 
Eudemon, a properly trained lad of twelve, and ''falls 
to crying like a cow, casting down his face, and hid- 
ing it with his cap." Still farther ridicule is heaped 

*B. I.C'slS, 21, 22. 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 71 

upon scholasticism, in the grave catalogue of the library 
of St. Yictor* in which a long list of books with most 
absurd scholastic titles, is given, with a seriousness be- 
fitting a most weighty occasion. 

The hero is now transferred to the more judicious 
tutorship of Ponocrates, the teacher of Eudemon ; and 
in the course henceforth pursued with him, and in the 
subjects he is set to study, Rabelais gives us his ideas of 
what should be the subject-matter and method of 
right education, and what will be its probable results.f 
Tutor and pupil go to Paris as the centre of enlight- 
enment ; and here Rabelais finds occasion for another 
witty thrust at the hated scholasticism : for Gargan- 
tua while strolling about the city, takes a fancy to 
the great bells of l^otre Dame, and carries them to 
his lodgings as playthings and appendages to his horse. 
Reclamation of the bells is made by Master Janotus 
de Bragmardo, a noted sophister; and in his speech, 
plentifully interlarded with the most barbarous Latin, J 
great fun is made of the wretched scholastics. In all 
this, apart from the crusade against scholasticism, and 
in the letter which Gargantua when king writes to his 
son Pantagruel,§ Rabelais makes manifest that his 
object is to train boys for the practical activities of 
life, to make them useful citizens or wise rulers. 

The means that he proposes for this include first of 
all, reverential devotion to God, not only by prayers 
made at fitting times, but by a pious observation of 
his works and meditation upon them morning and 

*B. 2, C.7. t B. 1, C's23and24. $3.1,0.19. § B. 2, C. 8. 



72 THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

evening. To this he adds care for health by all the 
varieties of vigorous exercise, and by the constant 
practice of neat and cleanly habits ; Gargantua, he 
says, " no longer combs his hair with his four fingers 
and thumb." For intellectual training, great empha- 
sis is laid on language study ; Latin is a matter of 
course, as a means for gaining all the rest ; but of 
Greek he says that "without it a man should be asliaraed 
to account himself a scholar " ; to which also he would 
add Hebrew and Chaldean, as aids to Bible study, and 
even Arabic. 

So far, Rabelais is merely in touch with the ideas 
of other theorists of his age. But he goes much 
farther than they in what he conceives that Conform- 
ity to Culture demands. lie asks for a fair acquaint- 
ance with mathematics, astronomy and civil law ; 
for a wide knowledge of history ; and for a singularly 
exact study of nature."^ He demands an acquaintance 
with the usual Arts ?iud Trades, to be gained by visits 
to workshops in bad weather.f Finally he would in- 
culcate a taste for the Fine Arts, music, painting, and 
sculpture, with skill \x\ fencing, that his pupil may be 
a complete man, cultured at all points. It is obvious 
that we have presented here, by this seemingly gro- 
tesque jester, a singularly wise and comprehensive 
scheme of study, adapted to give a complete and all- 
sided culture. 

In meeting the demands of a due Conformity to 
Nature, he is equally judicious. The methods that 

* B. 2. 0. 8. t B. I. C. 24. 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 73 

he represents as used with Gargantua are eminently 
objective, appealing in all possible cases to the proper 
use of the senses. Real object lessons are given at 
table by interesting conversations on the various 
articles that are set before them. Astronomy is learned 
by observation of the heavens. Botany is studied in 
the fields, with plants themselves, at first, and next by 
comparing the plants with poetic descriptions con- 
tained in the classics, i. e. Rabelais recommends " first 
things and then aboiit things," which was then a 
wholly new and unexplored world of knowledge. He 
even devises means for the objective illustration of 
abstract sciences like geometry and arithmetic. 

Again, he observes the principle that has now be- 
come an educational axiom, that mental discipline can 
be gained only by the personal exertion of the mental 
powers on the part of the pupil. Gargantua is incited 
to self activity, by being encouraged to independent 
work, by suggestions given only when be is at fault, 
and by being roused to personal reflection and inde- 
pendent thought on all subjects that are presented to 
him. 

It is obvious that with so gigantic a pupil, no other 
than gentle means are possible, yet Rabelais leaves u& 
in no doubt that gentleness is with him a choice rather 
than a necessity. Care is taken at night that all that 
has been seen or read during the day, shall be recapi- 
tulated in the pupil's own form of words. Severe 
study is duly alternated with vigorous open-air exer- 
cise in riding, swimming and wrestling, in playing at 



74 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

ball and tennis, and in other games in wliich active 
youth delight. And finally at meal times and in 
leisure hours, Kabelais would have young fellows 
engage in improving conversation with cultivated and 
well-informed men. It will thus be observed that 
Kabelais proposes in ]3oint of method, all that is most 
vitally important in our modern modes of instruction. 
Reference. Morley's ed. of Rabelais. Bk. 1, C's. 
13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24 and Bk. 2, C's 
7 and 8. 

Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, 1533-1592. 

The last of the group of theorists which we are to 
consider in this century is one who is of even more 
importance to us than any of the rest, because of the 
influence which his views on education have had on 
John Locke and on Rousseau. This man is Michel 
Eyquem de Montaigne, born of a noble family in 
1533 ; so trained up by an eccentric father that Latin 
was to him as a vernacular ; learned, as well in all the 
wisdom of the ancients, as in whatever in his own 
age was most elegant and refined ; and author of a 
famous series of essays on various social and phil- 
osophical questions, in which he has so judiciously 
used the stores of his vast erudition as to give a new 
value to what he has borrowed. He died in 1592. 

His educational views are presented chiefiy in the 
Essays on ^' Pedantry " and on " The Instruction of 
Children,""^ the latter of which is addressed to Mme. 

* Book I, No's. 24 and 25. 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 75 

Diane de la Foix, one of his friends, and was intended 
to guide her in bringing up her children. Something 
of interest in this regard may also be gleaned from the 
€ssaj on "The Affection of Fathers to their Children."* 
His essays are so discursive and withal so brilliant, so 
much seems worthy to be quoted because of its com- 
bination of weighty ideas with felicitous expression, 
that I find it especially difficult to bring the matter 
within due compass, and to give it that particular 
form which for the sake of clearness I have adopted 
in the other writers of this age. 

In respect to conformity to culture, his polemic 
is against Pedantry^ glancing only indirectly at 
scholasticism. Montaigne inveighs eloquently and 
wittily against the mere bookishness of his times, a 
spirit which was satisfied with saying '' Cicero said 
this," or " these are the very words of Aristotle," 
and so was content to have no thoughts of its own. 
" I love not, he cries, this borrowed and mendicant 
-sufficiency : Even if we could be learned with the 
wisdom of others, we can at least be wise only with 
our own wisdom. I hate the sage who is not wise for 
himself." He compares pedants to birds who go 
seeking grain which they bear to their broods without 
tasting it themselves ; — to one who goes to his neigh- 
bor's to warm himself but neglects to carry any fire 
home with him ; — and to a rich but ignorant Roman 
who kept several learned men by him to express on 
various subjects opinions which were his because he 
had bought them. 

* No. 8, Bk. 2. 



76 THE HISTORY OF MODEEN EDUCATION. 

Of the pupil trained in this bookish way, he says, 
" His Latin and Greek have rendered him sillier and 
more presumptuous than before he left home. He 
ought to bring back a full soul whereas it is only 
puffed up 'j and he has merely stuffed in place of 
enlarging it." " What a harm if we are taught 
neither to think well nor to act well." Speaking of 
reason, he thus happily defines the function of educa- 
tion : " For she is not to give light to the soul which 
has it not, nor to make a blind man see : her duty is 
not to furnish one with eyes but to train eyes, — to 
regulate one's gait, provided he has sound and service- 
able knees and feet." It would appear that the Cicer- 
onians whom Erasmus had belabored, had, in the last 
part of the century, been transformed into pedants, 
with like results to culture ; since neither took the 
trouble to have any thoughts of their own. 

Montaigne, because he esteems education "the 
greatest and most important task of the human under- 
standing," would make polite letters not the end to 
be sought, but the means whereby faculties may be 
developed, and the man fitted for usefulness in his 
life work. Hence he lays great stress on action as the 
expression of real knowledge. '' These are my les- 
sons, he says ; he has profited more by them who doe» 
them, than he who only knows them. — He will not so 
much say his lesson as he will do it : he will repeat it 
in his actions : we shall see whether there is prudence 
in his undertakings, kindness and justice in his man- 
ners, judgment and grace in his speech, — moderation 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. TT 

in his sports, temperance in his pleasures, and order 
in his economy. — The true mirror of our instruction 
is the course and tenor of our lives." It would be 
difficult to construct a better and more complete de- 
scription of the results of a well-ordered and effective 
education, training judgment by its use, and encour- 
aging independent thought, that its sharers may be- 
come men able and prudent, efficient and virtuous. 

As regards the discipline of schools, he would have 
the course of instruction characterized by " austere 
mildness," as far removed on the one hand from 
weakness and effeminacy, as on the other from that 
violence and force which debases and dulls a well- 
conditioned nature. "If you desire a boy to fear 
shame and chastisement, he says, do not harden him 
to them." He denounces with vigor the severities of 
the schools of his time, and says that when you draw 
near to them, you hear only cries both of children 
begging for mercy, and of masters drunken with rage. 
He would rather make the path of learning for boys 
a flowery one, that " where their jprojlt is, there may 
also be \X\q\y jpleasure.^'^ 

Of the means of training, he gives a generous assort- 
ment, lacking some things which Rabelais recom- 
mends, whilst emphasizing some which he omits. He 
sets high value on bodily training and fine manners, 
in which Locke follows him. " I desire, he says, that 
outward decorum and tact and good personal habits 
be fashioned at the same time with the soul. It is 
not a soul, it is not a body that we train ; it is a man, 



Y8 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

and it is not fit that we should separate them." The 
last sentence we shall recognize as an old acquaintance, 
when we meet it little changed in Rousseau's Emile. 

He would have Latin learned, not in the grammati- 
cal way, but by conversation and use as he himself 
learned it. We shall see that Locke also falls in with 
this idea. Foreign tongues in like manner should be 
gained by means of the intercourse of travel among 
the important nations who use them. Good books he 
would have read and thoroughly digested, to form the 
judgment, while informing the mind, — an act which 
he aptly illustrates by bees which plunder flowers of 
their sweets, but make of them honey which is all 
their own. He lays much stress on History, " the 
anatomy of philosophy, by which the most secret 
parts of our nature are penetrated ; " but he would 
have it so studied that the boy may gain from it, not 
mere facts, but the power to judge of facts, and thereby 
to attain worldly wisdom. Science should be so far 
studied, as to give that general view of nature and of 
our place in nature which befits the well-informed 
man who is no specialist. Indeed, being cliiefly intent 
on the well-trained gentleman and man of affairs, he 
lays his chief emphasis on Travel, on Converse with 
men and things, and most of all on Philosophy. 

He would have a judicious tutor to attend the boy 
on his travels and to regulate his intercourse with 
men ; and he expects from travel these advantages ; 
viz.: removal from paternal petting and injudicious 
fondness, with the concomitant strengthening of the 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 79 

body and steadying of the nerves ; knowledge of men 
of various nationalities and stations, their manners, 
characters, and language, that the boy may learn to 
value what is good, and to contemn what is bad ; and 
finally that the lad " may rub and polish his brains 
against those of others," and by this wide knowledge 
of the world, may early correct a tendency to narrow 
views of things and to provincialism in judgment. 
" This great world," he says, " is the mirror in which 
we must see ourselves, in order to know ourselves 
aright. So I wish that this be the book of my scholar. 
So many national characters, sects, judgments, opin- 
ions, laws, and customs, teach us to have a healthy 
judgment of our own, and train our reason to recog- 
nize our own imperfection and native weakness, whicli 
is no mean schooling. 

Philosophy he defines as having " virtue for her 
aim. — Her fit and proper ofiice is to know how to en- 
joy good things temperately, and to lose them with 
fortitude. — It seems to me that the first teachings 
with which we should nourish the soul, should be 
those which regulate its manners and its feelings, 
which teach it to know itself, to know both how to 
live well and how to die well." What Montaigne 
means by philosophy in education is evidently what 
we should term a proper training of the feelings and 
morals, and this philosophy he justly says, "A child 
as soon as he leaves his nurse is much more capable of 
learning, than he is to learn to read or write. Philos- 
ophy has its lessons for the infancy of man as well as 
for his decline." 



80 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

Such seem to us to be the most fimportant points 
in Montaigne's essays which concern the theory of 
education, its spirit, its purposes, and its means. Much 
of it we shall meet again in Locke, but presented in 
a loftier spirit. As for the boy who shows himself 
incurably disinclined to this elegant nurture, Mon- 
taigne bluntly says, " I know no other resource than 
to make him a pastry cook in some good city, even 
were he the son of a duke." 

So far as concerns any tentatives of Montaigne look- 
ing to conformity to nature, it promises well for him 
tliat at the outset he clearly recognizes the great dif- 
ficulty, as well as the importance of right nurture. 
This difficulty, he sees, arises from the obscurity of 
tlie signs of infant inclinations, and the consequent 
uncertainty of the judgments based on the "slight 
guesses whicli we form from the movements of this 
period of life." Hence it happens, he says, that " for 
lack of having chosen their coarse aright, one often 
labors to no purpose, and wastes much time in train- 
ing children for that in which they can never excel." 
To obviate this difficulty, he proposes to limit early 
efforts " to guiding them only to those tilings which 
are [universally] best and most profitable." This idea 
is probably the germ which the paradoxical Rousseau 
expanded into his fancy of losing time to gain time. 

Still farther, he would choose a tutor with a mind 
strong and well-balanced rather than very full ; and, 
while he would like both, he would prefer good man- 
ners and a sound understanding, to mere knowledge. 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 81 

This tutor he would then have guide his charge in " a 
new way." This new way implies the most complete 
self activity of the child, in the free exercise of all 
Ms powers, in personal application of what he knows, 
and especially in the use of judgment on all that 
comes before him. He says of the tutor, " Accord- 
ing to the nature of the spirit that he has in hand, let 
Mm begin by putting him to the test, permitting him 
to taste of things, to choose them, to discern by him- 
self, — sometimes opening the door for him, sometimes 
leaving him to open it himself." The tutor should 
a'CCommodate himself to the ability of his pupil, a task 
which Montaigne acknowledges to be not easy, but 
rather '' a mark of a lofty and very strong spirit to 
•know how to condescend to those childish steps and 
to guide them." 

Futhermore he insists abundantly on observation 
*and experience of things, rather than mere books in 
instruction. To this end is intended the foreign travel 
and the converse with men, on which he lays much 
stress. In ridiculing mere word-splitting and the 
quibbles of logicians, he says " let us leave them to 
misuse their leisure ; we have other business. Let 
our disciple be provided with things i the words will 
follow but too abundantly. — I wish that things pre- 
dominate, and that they so fill the fancy of the lis- 
tener, that he shall have no recollection of the words." 
And of those who say they know, but cannot express 
what they know, he says, " In my opinion these are 
mere shadows of formless conceptions, which they are 
unable to unravel and make clear within, and so can- 



82 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

not express outwardly. " This can hardly fail to recall 
Cato's famous saying " Get a firm grip on the mattery 
and words will follow fast enough." 

His final word is this : " There is nothing like satis- 
fying an appetite and desire for knowledge : other- 
wise we become mere asses loaded with books : we 
give to boys with blows of a whip, a pocket-full of 
science to keep, whereas to do well, it is not enough 
to merely lodge it with them ; they should espouse 
it." The key notes to his pedagogic method then are 
these, — Self activity of the pupil in the use of all his 
powers and capabilities ; things before words ; judg- 
ment and understanding before memory ; adaptation 
of instruction to the pupil's present abilities. 

Let us now briefly summarize the educational ser- 
vices of the sixteenth century, and take account of the 
more or less novel pedagogical ideas which, during its 
course, were expressed by distinguished men. 

The battle has been fought and won against mere 
ancient authority in the realm of thought, and, in 
that of letters, against scholasticism and pedantry, 
whether masquerading under the garb of Cicero or in 
a parti-colored coat made up of a patch- work of other 
men's ideas. As incidents of this victoiy, the new 
Humanistic learning has won its way largely into the 
old universities and secondary schools; a thorough 
reform and reorganization of the venerable university 
of Paris has been proposed by Ramus ; and the human 
mind has very widely begun to assert its right to think 
freely, as it will, and on whatever it will. 

Proposals have been made to widen the range of 



EDUCATIONAL OPINIONS. 83 

studies, — through the introduction of history by 
Luther, Eabelais, and Montaigne, — of natural history 
by Rabelais, — and of mathematics by Ramus, who 
emphasized his recommendation by the endowment of 
a chair of mathematics. A demand for tlie better 
education of women has been made by Erasmus, by 
Luther, and by Yives. A thorough physical training 
has been insisted upon by Erasmus and Luther, by 
Rabelais and Montaigne. The need of careful atten- 
tion to morals and manners has been emphasized by all 
save Ramus ; and religion has been declared to be the 
needfui basis of moral training by all save Montaigne, 
whose philosophy bears the stamp rather of the teach- 
ings of such enlightened heathen as Seneca and Plu- 
tarch than of Christ. Much therefore has been done 
to conform education to the best means of culture 
available in that age, or to show where such conformity 
was still needful. 

Again, the chief source of difficulty in securing con- 
formity to nature in instruction has been clearly indi- 
cated by Montaigne ; the great pedagogical principles,, 
of assuring the intellectual co-operation of pupils, of 
adapting instruction to their ability to grasp at all 
times and in all subjects, and of the need to use objective 
methods and to present subjects inductively — first the 
thing and then about the thing, have been proposed 
to succeeding ages to be by them adapted to the use 
of schools ; and Yives has also made clear the differ- 
ence between the logical order of subjects and the 
order in which they should be presented to the youth- 
ful intellio:ence. 



CHAPTER lY. 

^DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTUKY. 

Philip Melanchthon, 1497-1560. 

Foremost among the practical educators of this 
century must be named Philip Melanchthon, the com- 
panion and judicious adviser of Luther in the religious 
reformation. He was born son of a pious and re- 
spectable armorer named Schwarzerd, in 1497, and 
died 1560 in Wittenberg where he had been more 
than forty years professor. His early education was 
carried on under charge of his maternal grandfather, 
who thrashed him soundly when he made mistakes in 
grammar, '' in which wise," says Melanchthon, " he 
made a grammarian of me." His early promise at- 
tracted the notice of his uncle, the famous E-euchlin, 
who translated his name Schwarzerd into its Greek 
equivalent Melanchthon, after the scholarly fashion 
of the age. He received the bachelor's degree in 
Heidelberg at the early age of fourteen, and then 
went to Tubingen where he caught the enthusiasm of 
the New Learning, received his master's degree at 
seventeen, and when barely nineteen published an 
edition of Terence, whom he recommended " especially 
to youth as a teacher of life and of language." He 
mastered Greek ; read Aristotle in the original that 
lie might know his dialectics and philosophy, unmixed 
with scholastic corruptions ; studied mathematics, 

(84) 



DISTINGUISHED TEACHEES. 85 

and even law and medicine ; and in his twenty- 
first year published his Greek grammar. At the age 
of twenty-one, on the recommendation of his uncle, 
Keuchlin, he was made professor of Greek at Witten- 
berg where he remained till the close of his active 
and useful life. 

His educational services here were three-fold, as- 
professor, as school organizer, and as author of gram- 
mars, editions of classics, and several other text-books 
for school use. 

As professor, his activity was extraordinary, and 
the range of his instruction astonishing. He lec- 
tured, says Yon Kaumer, on the Old and Kew Testa- 
ment, on dogmatics, ethics, logic, and physics; and 
"besides, interpreted a crowd of Greek and Latin 
authors." His lectures treated subjects so funda- 
mentally and clearly, and withal with such eloquence, 
as to attract to them a crowd of students, which 
reached at times 2000 in number. His influence over 
his students was seldom equalled ; an influence which 
was due, not merely to his merited reputation as an 
instructor, but also to his uniform kindly care for 
their interests, his wise counsels in their difficulties, 
and his frequent extra-professorial help in their under- 
takings. '' I can truthfully declare," he says himself 
in an academic discourse, " that I embrace all students- 
with a paternal care and interest, and am deeply con- 
cerned in all that may bring them into danger," a 
declaration which his entire career as a teacher con- 
firms. From his instructions went forth several men. 



86 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

animated by his spirit, to become famous directors of 
schools, amono^st whom were Trotzendorf and Michael 
Neander, presently to be mentioned. Through this, 
as well as other services rendered to the Renaissance 
in its early years, he won the title of " Preceptor of 
Germany," as Rabanus Maurus had seven centuries 
earlier been called "First Preceptor of Germany." 

The text-books which he prepared for schools, were 
a farther means of extending his influence in promot- 
ing the new learning. His Greek and Latin Gram- 
mars were written for the use of his pupils. In a 
later edition of the latter, in which he enters upon the 
praise of grammar, he says significantly, " In my first 
edition some things were missed. It should be added 
that too many rules ought not to be given lest boys be 
frightened away by prolixity." In his text-book of 
logic, which like the two preceding ones, was pub- 
lished in his early manhood, he says " The earlier (i. e. 
scholastic) dialectic has fallen into contempt, because 
it was no art, but only the shadow of an art, and led 
into endless labyrinths. But I present the true, un- 
adulterated dialectic, as we have received it from 
Aristotle and some of his discreet expounders." In- 
stead of denouncing Aristotle, like Ramus, because of 
the absurdities which had been attached to his system 
during ignorant ages, Melanchthon undertakes to pre- 
sent the real logic of Aristotle. His text-book of 
rhetoric published when he was only twenty-two, 
was intended as an elementary introduction to the 
rhetorical works of Cicero and Qiiintilian. He wrote 



DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS. 8Y 

also text-books of physics and ethics, the latter in 
the form of a commentary on Aristotle's Ethics. All 
these text-books were characterized by clearness of 
definition, orderliness of arrangement, and simple 
<ilegance of language. They were long and widely 
used, passed through several editions, and had great 
influence in Germany. 

Melanchthon also heartily interested himself in 
School Organization, through which he exerted a vast 
influence in Germany, as well by wise and timely 
advice given to those who purposed establishing 
schools, as by his plan for organizing the schools of 
Saxony, which grew out of his visitation of the Saxon 
schools and churches in 1527. In this plan he says 
that " parents should send their children to school in 
God's name, and train them for the Lord God, that 
He may use them for the good of others " in both 
church and state. In his schools he would have 
" Latin only, not German, Greek, or Hebrew studied," 
that the children might not be overloaded with either 
subjects or books, to the end that they might learn 
something well. 

The schools should be organized in three separate 
troops or grades, in the first of which the children 
should be taught, reading, writing, and a good stock 
of Latin words, together with the Lord's Prayer, the 
Creed, and a few prayers ; in the second, were to be 
pursued grammar and Latin reading of the simp- 
ler kind, also music, and portions of the scriptures to 
be well learned, with easy explanations of Christian 



y© THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

doctrines and duties. The third grade was to be- 
composed of the elite youth, who, besides music^ 
were to read the Latin authors of the hio^her sort, and 
to be held to speak Latin and write Latin letters and 
verses. The boys in this and in the second grade 
were to be thoroughly drilled in grammar; for 
Melanchthon believed that " no greater harm can be 
done to all arts, than when the youth is not well 
practised in grammar," which, as we have seen, had 
been thoroughly beaten into him. 

Such were Melanchthon's somewhat artless ideas of 
a proper school- system, marked possibly by the crudity 
of a first effort at organization, but more probably 
controlled in form by the fewness of teachers in the 
schools of his time. We shall find this effort greatly- 
improved in the work of Sturm, the great school 
organizer of the 16th century, whose plan was adapted 
for schools well equipped with teachers. 

Johann Sturm, 1507-1589. 

We shall do well to review next the services of the 
most renowned teacher of this age, one whose school 
organization has left its impress on the secondary 
school system of all northern Europe since his day,. 
Johann Sturm, of Strasburg. Born in 1507, of re- 
spectable parents whose memory he always held in 
grateful esteem, he received his earliest schooling with 
the sons of the nobleman whom his father served as 
treasurer. In his early youth, he was for some years- 
a pupil in Liege of the Brethren of the Common 
Life, from whose school he went at the age of seven- 



DISTINGUISHED TEACIIEES. S9 

teen to Lou vain, where he spent three years as student 
and two as teacher. Thence he went to Paris, where 
he studied medicine, logic, and the Greek and Latin 
classics, where also he married, and had a large num- 
ber of boarding students of several nationalities. At 
the age of thirty, his growing reputation caused him 
to be called to Strasburg, whose schools were in a 
wretched condition, to organize there the gymnasium 
whose success was to give him a lasting fame. He 
remained at its head for forty-seven years, when he 
was displaced as the result of a bitter church quarrel, 
and died five years after in 1589, at the age of 
eiglity-two. 

The fame of his school drew to it students from 
far and near, so that it is said of it that in 15Y8 its 
pupils numbered several thousand, drawn from no 
less than eight nations and from all social ranks, from 
princes to the sons of peasants; and, as has just been 
said, it became a model for a great number of other 
schools, amongst which were those of England. Its 
reputation was due to its clearly defined aim, its 
thoroughly systematic organization v/ith due gradation 
of studies, and the thorough scholarship which was 
gained in all that was taught. Its aim was to train 
pious, learned, and eloquent men, and this it pursued 
faithfully and exclusively. The means that were 
used to secure this end, were exclusively literary ; for 
religion, an acquaintance with the New Testament in 
Greek, much of which was to be memorized, together 
with the Catechism ; for learning, a thorough ac- 



90 THE HISTORY OF MODEEN EDUCATION. 

quaintance with the classic authors of Greece and 
Rome ; for eloquence, an elementary study of rhetoric 
and dialectics, illustrated and practised upon during 
the last three years in the ancient orators and poets. 

From the examinations which were to be given in 
the last year of the gymnasial course, it would seem 
also that some very rudimentary acquaintance with 
arithmetic was given. Of other branches there was 
no mention. His aim therefore was perfectly simple 
and definite, and equally definite and simple were the 
means by which he strove to attain it. Likewise 
both aim and means were in complete accord with the 
ideal of his age. This ideal was the attainment of 
eloquence in the Latin tongue by means of the imita- 
tion of the ancient authors, who were supposed to 
have exhausted all the possibilities of knowledge. 
Indeed, according to Paulsen, there had arisen in this 
age a pedagogy which represented '' the lack of elo- 
quence as the source of all evils in the culture and 
morals of the clergy, and which believed that with 
eloquence would enter also wisdom and virtue which 
iire inseperably united with it." 

Sturm's method of teaching both Latin and Greek, 
aside from the thorough drill in grammar which was 
always to be given, was that of double translation 
from Latin into German and vice versa, from Greek 
into Latin and then back into Greek. A recom- 
mendation occurs in his directions to the teacher of 
the fifth class which is so similar to one of Roger 
Ascham's expedients that it deserves to be quoted. 



DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS. 91 

•*' It is a good practice to cause some passage from the 
Latin orators to be translated into German, and then 
to give it in the school to be translated back, into 
Latin extempore ; since the Roman orator himself 
plays the part of corrector instead of the teacher." 
Besides this reciprocal translation, there was much 
<iomposition and verse-making, and a constant use of 
Latin as a means of communication. In the later 
years of instruction, the boys also took part in Greek 
and Latin comedies. 

The pedagogic ideas which controlled Sturm's 
method, and which have been reserved for this place 
because they likewise gave color to his plan of organi- 
zation, were briefly these : — all subjects are to be kept 
carefully within the range of the present abilities of 
the pupils : all teaching is to be made perfectly clear 
-and definite : little is to be demanded at a time, but 
that little is to be thoroughly mastered and frequently 
reviewed ; religion is to be taught by interpretation 
of the 'New Testament, and by memorizing consider- 
-able passages thereof. 

With regard to Sturm's plan of organization, it 
should be borne in mind that it is the very earliest 
scheme that we have, looking to an extended, syste- 
matic, well-articulated course of studies for a school 
of several teachers, in which is assigned to each class 
such portions of the subject-matter of the course of 
instruction as is suited to the age and stage of ad- 
vancement of its pupils. The schools of the Greeks 
.and Romans, as we have already seen, bore no such 



92 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

systematic character. The autobiographic account of 
Walafried Strabo in the ninth century, gives no indi- 
cations of such a plan in one of the best monasteries 
in this most enliglitened century of the Dark Ages. 
The simple plan of Melanchthon which has recently 
been mentioned, and the somewhat earlier three-class 
plan of Agricola, bear no comparison with the elabor- 
ate and thoroughly progressive scheme of Sturm. 

This program, which seems to have had its sugges- 
tions in what he saw among the Brethren of Deventer, 
contemplated a gymnasial course of nine years, which 
later was extended to ten. It beoran at the ao^e of 
seven years and ended at sixteen or seventeen. To 
this course succeeded an academic course of five years, 
in which the instruction was given by lectures. The 
school training was thus to end at the age of twenty- 
one or twenty-two. The first seven years were to be 
devoted to gaining a pure and fluent use of the Latin ; 
the next two or three, to acquiring ornate and logical 
speech ; the last five, to gaining the ability to speak 
aptly and to the point. 

The details of this plan are much too lengthy to be 
given here even in outline ; but they may be found 
in full in Barnard's American Journal of Education, 
Yol. 4th, pp. 167 and 401, translated from the first 
volume of Yon Raumer's Histoiy. It will be found 
interesting and instructive to peruse the careful in- 
structions given to his associates ; and the intelligent 
school manager will be likely to rise from its perusal 
filled with admiration for the pedagogic genius of him 



DISTINGTTISIIED TEACHERS. 9 

who devised it. For, as the head-master of IIarro\T 
has very recently said, "it is the time-table which is 
the test of the modern schoolmaster; it is there that 
he may win his main success. Yet it is only he who 
has been called on to essay it that knows where the 
difficulty lies, and how great it is." 

Yalentine Trotzeiulorf and Michael Neander. 

Let us now briefly sketch the pedagogic career of 
two of Melanchthon's pupils, who became famous in 
their day for some special features of their method of 
teaching and management, which seem to me curious 
and instructive. These men were Yalentine Trotzen- 
dorf and Michael Neander. The early education of 
Trotzendorf, who was born of a peasant family in 
1490, in a village whose name he adopted as his own, 
was somewhat interrupted and neglected. When 
twenty-two years old, he sold his small inheritance, 
and went for two years to Leipsic, where he gained a 
knowledge of Latin and some acquaintance with 
Greek ; when twenty-six he became teacher of a school 
near his home ; and it was not until he was twenty- 
eight years old that he threw up his place and went to 
Wittenberg where for five years he was under the 
strong influence of Melanchthon and became an excel- 
lent scholar. Then he went to Goldberg, first as 
assistant and later as rector of the school, and there he 
spent the remainder of his life, save an interval of 
four years, so earnestly devoted to iiis duties as never 
to marry. He died in 1556. 

The end that he proposed to himself was " that 



94 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

the boys should be fitted hereafter to study in the 
higher faculties " of the universities. To this end^ 
" first of all grammar must be pursued with special 
care as the mother and nurse of the other arts ; " to be 
followed by readings out of good authors, first prose 
writers, " that the boys in both ways, both by rule and 
example, might be so guided to the Latin tongue as 
to learn to speak and write it skillfully," and next 
poets, that they might understand metrics and learn 
to make verses. " The school laws direct that in their 
exercises, the boys "shall use no phrase until they 
have accurately inquired in what author that phrase 
occurs, and whether it is sufficiently elegant and 
suitable;" also that they shall never use their mother 
tongue. " Besides Latin, Greek grammar and the read- 
ing of Greek authors was prescribed;" "Dialectics 
Trotzendorf taught continually; and, through the 
speeches of Cicero and those in Livy, he prepared 
his pupils for rhetoric." Music and arithmetic are 
mentioned as studies in the Goldberg school, and "re 
ligion, he taught himself with pious earnestness,"' 
calling it the soul of his school and the soul of all 
instruction. Hence there is little in the subjects taught 
to distinguish it from other good schools of the time 
in Germany. To show the effect of the instruction, 
however, it is well to note that it was said that in 
Goldberg, during Trotzendorf's time, even the servant& 
and the maids spoke Latin. 

What specially characterized this school, however, 
was Trotzendorf's scheme of government, a scheme 



DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS. 95 

whereby the pupils shared in the management, and 
were to a large extent made responsible for special 
features of the school life. He created various offices 
designated by G-reek or Latin names, all filled by 
students, and having each its distinctive duties. One 
set of officers looked after the house order, the tidiness 
of clothing, and the times at which pupils rose in the 
morning and retired at night ; others supervised the 
table order and the table manners of students ; still 
others were charged with seeing that Latin was spoken, 
and that pupils studied diligently. There was also a 
school judiciary to take cognizance of offences, before 
which supposed culprits were tried, with some days 
allowed for preparing a good Latin defence, on the 
excellence of which largely depended how easily they 
were let off. Over all this student machinery of 
officers, stood Trotzendorf as " perpetual dictator," 
with functions partly executive, partly appellate. 
This scheme worked admirably in the skillful hands 
of its originator ; and something analogous to it, has 
occasionally been tried since his day with varying 
success. 

Michael Neander, born 1525, was the son of a shop- 
keeper who wished to make of him a merchant, but 
was disgusted at his lack of skill in managing a horse, 
and hence declared he was fit for nothing in the world 
but to be a monk. Many years later the old man 
rectified his opinion, when his good-for-nothing son 
had become one of the most famous teachers in Ger- 
many. The boy was sent to school, and at seventeen 



96 THE HISTORY OF MODEEN EDUCATION. 

went to the University of Wittenberg, where, under 
Melanchthon's guidance, his studies took a wide range 
which later showed itself in his school. At the age of 
twentj-two, he became assistant in a school at Nord- 
hausen, with a wise old rector, and he tells most 
amusingly how his conceit was taken down, and how 
eifectually he learned that " school work is quite a 
different thing from what young fellows think it." 
Finally at the age of twenty -five he was made rector 
of a cloister school at II f eld am Harz where he re- 
mained till his death in 1595, and made of it what 
Melanchthon pronounced one of the very best schools 
in Germany. 

His career deserves mention here, not from the 
great size of his school, which was never very large, 
but from tlie things in which liis practice differed 
from that of his contemporaries. An important point 
in which he diverged from otlier teachers was in his 
^' sliarp separation of the elementary from the scientific^ 
of the indispensable and wide-reaching principles from 
the less needful or anomalous," i. e., of the matters 
which really belong to secondary instruction and which 
should therefore be thorougJily mastered^ from those 
which properly pertain to the higher professional 
training. Hence resulted, that by giving exclusive 
attention to tliat part of instruction which properly 
belonged to him, " his pupils when they left him 
were so well-grounded in languages and arts, as 
immediately to till positions in school or church," as 
was said by one of his contemporaries; or as one of 



DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS. 97 

his pupils said, " JSTeauder's boys, when they went to 
the university, were at once ahead of most others." 
He wrote many brief text-books of hanguages and of 
several sciences, which embodied this principle, and 
some of which came into wide use. 

A second point in which he diverged from his con- 
temporaries, was in the emphasis which he alone gave 
to histor}'-, to geography, and to physics, or more 
properly natural history. For all of these, he wrote 
manuals for instruction, and for the first two, also 
compends. His manual of geography is a very curious 
book, the* names of places being accompanied by 
biographical accounts of persons, and in some cases by 
rambling autobiographical details. An ample account 
of Neander and his books will be found in Yon Raumer 
Yol I. p. 180, a good abstract of which is given in 
Barnard's American Journal of Education, Y. p. 599. 

Roger Ascbani, 1516-1568. 

Roger Ascham, whose life extended from 1516 to 
1568, and who was tutor to several distinguished per- 
sons including Queen Elizabeth, deserves a brief 
mention in this place, if for no other reason, at least 
for this, that he is much the best known English 
teacher of this century, and that he has embodied his 
practice and his opinions in a work entitled " The 
Schoolmaster" which has become an English classic. 
This book is chiefly occupied with a presentation of 
the author's method of teaching Latin, with frequent 
charming digressions on important pedagogic topics, 



98 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

several of which have already been cited. His method 
with Latin was by double translation of Latin authors, 
accompanied by careful comparison of re-translations 
with the originals, and by frequent repetition to assure 
thoroughness. Like Sturm, he would set as exercises 
for the pupil translations from unfamiliar Latin works 
to be translated back into Latin, and then compared 
and corrected by the original. He would have the 
teaching of grammar limited to the essentials, and 
would have these learned only by their use ; for he 
believed that grammar forms and rules are " sooner 
and surer learned by examples of good authors than 
by the naked rules of grammarians." Through recent 
re-publications, this interesting work is now placed 
within easy reach of all who care for educational 
literature. 

Richard Mulcaster, 1530-1611. 

The name of another worthy English schoolmaster 
and educational author of this century, has recently 
been rescued from the oblivion into which it had 
sunk, partly through the labors of the Early English 
Text Society, but more especially through the repub- 
lication by Mr. E. H. Quick of his most important 
work. This man was Richard Mulcaster, who was 
born of a good but reduced English family about 1530. 
His early education was received at Eton, and in 
1556 he graduated at Oxford with high repute for 
scholarship, especially in Hebrew. He then became 
a schoolmaster in London, and in 1561 was made the 
first head-master of Merchant Taylor's school, at the 



DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS. 99'' 

munificent salary of 10£ a year, the hours of school 
being four in the forenoon and four in the afternoon. 
During a portion of his period of service, an officer of 
the company of Merchant Taylors, paid to Mulcaster 
an additional 10£ a year, making his emoluments at 
the utmost the equivalent of not quite a thousand 
dollars a year of our present money. 

In this position he remained twenty-six years, 
during which, in 1581, he published " Positions," a 
work of great pedagogic interest, and not long after,, 
*' The Elementarie." Some disagreements with his 
employers had marked his experience in the school,. 
due probably to the fact that he could not forget that 
he was of gentle birth, and hence thought himself 
superior to the tradesmen who employed him ; and 
these disagreements finally caused a severance of his 
relations with the school. Some years later he became 
High Master of St. Paul's School where lie remained 
twelve years, holding for much of the time a valuable 
living to which he had been presented by Queen 
Elizabeth who seems to have had a high regard for the 
sturdy schoolmaster. The last few years of his long 
life were spent in his living, where he proved but an 
indifferent preacher. He died in 1611. 

At the outset of the " Positions," which is the work 
recently edited by Mr. Quick, Mulcaster manifests a 
rare good sense in stating the principles by which he 
proposes to be guided in his use of the opinions of 
authors. He proposes to test them by right reason 
and by their probable adaptation to the uses, circum^^ 



100 THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

stances, and modes of thinking of his own time and 
country ; and to adopt nothing, whoever may be its 
author, save as it has " nature to lead it, reason to 
back it, custom to commend it, experience to allow it, 
and profit to prefer it." 

He declines to fix any definite age at which chil- 
dren shall begin their schooling, " because ripeness in 
children is not tied to one time, no more than all corn 
is ripe for one reaping." " If," he says, " the child 
have a weak body though never so strong a wit, let 
him grow on the longer till the strength of his body 
do answer to his wit." A little later, he emphasizes 
the careful regard that he thinks should be had, not 
less to the pupil's physical development than to his 
intellectual progress, by devoting no less than thirty 
chapters of his work to physical education considered 
solely from the schoolmaster's point of view. " The 
soul and body," he says, " being co-partners in good 
and ill, in sweet and sour, in mirth and mourning, and 
having generally a common sympathy and a mutual 
feeling in all passions; how can they be, or rather 
wdiy should they be severed in training? the one made 
^ strong and well qualified, the other left feeble and a 
prey to infirmity ? Will ye have the mind to obtain 
those things which be most proper unto her and most 
profitable unto you when they be obtained? Then 
must ye also have a special care that the body be well 
appointed, for fear it shrink while ye be either in 
^ course to get them, or in case to use them." 

Nor would he have this care, so needful for physi- 



DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS. 101 

cal efficiency, "left at random to liberty, but brought 
into form of ordinary discipline generally in all men, 
because all men need help for necessary health and 
ready execution of their natural actions, but particu- 
larly those men whose life is in leisure, whose brains 
be most busied and their wits most wearied, in which 
kind students be no one small part but the greatest of 
all, which so use their minds as if they cared not for 
their bodies, and yet so need their bodies as without 
the strengtli and soundness whereof they be good for 
nothing but to moan themselves, and to make others 
marvel why they take no more heed how to do that 
long which they do so well." When we consider that 
the chapters on physical training by gymnastic exer- 
cises and games, to which these wise words are the 
prelude, were written more than three centuries ago, 
and how comparatively recent are all efforts at proper 
bodily education, it will easily be seen that this old 
English schoolmaster was wise far beyond his age. 

With regard to intellectual education also, Mulcas- 
ter has some ideas which were far from being common 
in his day. He would have elementary instruction 
include reading and writing, drawing and singing, and 
the ability to play on some musical instrument. The 
first two of these he thinks should be the common right 
of all ; and, differing from the custom of his time, he 
would have the mother-tongue made the language in 
which the child should be first taught. He testifies 
his regard for the vernacular by writing his book in 
it, that it may be accessible, as he says, as well to 



102 THE history' of MODERN EDUCATION. 

the unlearned as to the learned ; for " He that under- 
stands no Latin can understand English, and he that 
understands Latin very well, can understand English 
far better if he will confess the truth." In his Ele- 
mentarie published in 1582, he emphasizes the impor- 
tance of a careful school study of English. Before 
proceeding to give seven precepts for the correct 
writing of English he says, " For our natural tongue 
being as beneficial unto us for our own needful use as 
any other is to the people which use it, and having as 
pretty and as fair observations in it as any other hath, 
and being as ready to yield to any rule of art as any 
other is, why should I not take some pains to find out 
the right writing of ours, as other countrymen have 
done to find the like in theirs ? " Why not indeed ? 
every well-instructed educator of to-day is ready to 
€cho ; yet such a question was by no means a common 
one among the learned men of the sixteenth century ; 
and honest Richard, in the care that he enjoins for 
the literary study of English, was well-nigh tliree cen- 
turies in advance of any definite study of the mother- 
tongue in English schools. 

"While he considers the ability to read and write, 
the common right of all, he by no means favors the 
idea of Erasmus of giving a high education to as large 
a number as possible ; for he fears that a large class of 
learned men without intellectual employment may be 
uneasy and seditious, a fear that is coming to be ex- 
pressed in more than one high quarter to-day. Yet he 
thinks that endowments for the encouragement of 



DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS. 103 

higher learning, should go chiefly to poor boys who 
manifest marked ability, whilst they should be open 
on equal terms to the rich who will study, that such 
benefactions may not be degraded in general estima- 
tion to a badge of charity. 

Mulcaster likewise makes an earnest plea for the 
right education of girls, basing it on these four 
grounds : (1) '^ the custom of the country which al- 
loweth them to learn," (2) " the duty which we owe 
unto them whereby we are charged in conscience not 
to leave them lame in that which is for them," (3) 
" their own towardness which God by nature would 
never have given them to remain idle or to small pur- 
pose," and (4) "the excellent effects in that sex when 
they have had the help of good bringing up." What 
he thinks this correct female education should include 
would be, " reading well, writing fair, singing sweet, 
and playing fine," to which he seems inclined to add 
drawing and the ability " to understand and speak the 
learned languages and those tongues also which the 
time most embraceth, with some logical help to chop, 
and some rhetoric to brave," i. e. adorn. It is hardly 
necessary to add that in his scheme of female educa- 
tion, Mulcaster was far in advance of the age in which 
he lived. It is earnestly to be hoped that his chief 
work which is now placed in easy reach of educators 
may be widely read. 

The Jesuit Schools. 

The famous schools of the Jesuits which began in 
the middle of this century, and spread rapidly until 



104 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

they covered all western Europe, deserve a more ex- 
tended notice than is consistent witli our plan. Their 
organization in five classes the last of which was of two 
years, was probably suggested by that of Sturm, though 
the age of admission to their schools was fourteen. 
The exclusively literary character of their studies, 
pursued for style in selections from classic authors, 
with the vernacular tabooed, and geography and his- 
tory used merely for purposes of exposition, was very 
similar to that of the other good schools of the six- 
teenth century. Their aim however was seemingly 
more limited than that of the other schools which we 
have described : it was to develop the power to ac- 
quire and reproduce. Originality or independence of 
thought was no part of their object, nor was it encour- 
aged. From this narrowness of aim, and from the 
alleged lack of deep morality based on principle which 
their system inculcated, sprang the faults with which 
the education they gave is charged. 

It is hardly just to blame them for religious prose- 
lytism, as though they were the only sinners in this 
respect. During this and the succeeding century the 
Jesuits were far from having a monopoly of religious 
exclusiveness. In most great schools religion was 
inculcated, and of a type which was acceptable to the 
ruling powers. This the Jesuits likewise did, theirs 
being of the Romish type. Their success in this 
propaganda was due to the admirable skill they showed 
in gaining influence over their pupils, a skill not always 
displayed by those who opposed them. The care 



DISTINGUISHED TEACHERS. 105 

which they exercised to preserve the health of their 
pupils, by proper diet, ventilation, and exercise; and 
the attention that they gave to the cultivation of good 
and even elegant manners, were wholly admirable. 

Their 7nethods were skillfully adapted to the end 
which they proposed. They were uniform in charac- 
ter, kind and agreeable in tone, and adapted to win 
the love of the pupils. The work which they set and 
which was rigidly exacted, was carefully graded to 
the capacity of pupils, never excessive, and never too 
difficult. Difficulties of grammar were taught only 
when they occurred in the due course of reading. 
Dail}^ and weekly repetitions were required to assure 
mastery. The oral and written examinations, which 
were given yearly, were carefully prepared for as to 
manner and form. The teaching which was mostly 
oral, was given methodically with frequent questions 
by the teacher, and with written notes, exercises, 
themes, and verses on the part of pupils. 

The teachers, who were mostly novices of the order, 
with a much smaller number of the fully professed 
brothers, received a careful jpremous jprejparation for 
their important duties, in which they were usually 
engaged for from four to six years. A careful previ- 
ous preparation of their lessons, according to a pre- 
scribed form was also rigidly exacted ; and their work 
was thoroughly supervised, at least once in two weeks, 
by the Prefect of studies. 

The principle of Emulation, a motive so active 
among boys, was appealed to by the Jesuits in all pos- 



106 THE HISTORY OF MODEEN EDUCATION. 

sible ways. Places in class, badges for excellence, 
prizes for superiority, were freely and effectively used. 
The boys were arranged in pairs called rivals, to catch 
each other in any errors that might occur, or in op- 
posing bands to challenge each other to scholarly com- 
bats by questions. Many teachers at present do not 
like the method, but it must be owned that it was 
used thoroughly and skilfully. 

The schools of the Jesuits became so famous for 
the thorou2:hness and effectiveness of the work which 
they did, and for the mildness of their methods in an 
age when school discipline was of the heroic type, 
that they grew to be very largely frequented, it is 
said, even by Protestants. If the educational aim of 
the Jesuits seems to us narrow, it must in common 
fairness be confessed that it was well-nigh indistin- 
guishable save in form of statement from that of 
Sturm. They as well as Sturm aimed at eloquence, 
and considered it synonymous with a facile and cor- 
rect mastery of the Latin tongue. Like Sturm they 
emphasized piety, each side having its own definition 
of what was pious. The Jesuits also agreed with 
Sturm, and indeed with the current idea of the 16th 
century, in considering the wisdom of past ages as a 
kind of closed circle enclosing all that man needed to 
know, and hence strove only for the power of acqui- 
sition. The important difference lies in the fact that 
while the successors of Sturm rapidly outgrew their 
narrowness of view, the Jesuits showed little disposi- 
tion to modify their educational opinions. 



DISTINGUISHED TEACHEKS. lOY 

It is but just for us to remember that, whatever 
vices their system may Later have made man- 
ifest, and which in the 18th century led to their 
temporary suppression in some European states, 
they were nevertheless skilful schoolmasters, and 
showed great practical sagacity ; that they gave ad- 
mirable care to physical education and to training in 
good manners ; and that they were pioneers in the 
important matters of carefully training their teachers 
for their duties, and of a systematic sujyervision of 
their work while in progress. The motive to which 
they so largely and skilfully appealed for securing 
good scholarship, although now reprehended in many 
influential quarters, is still far from extinct, as is tes- 
tified by our prize systems, our marking systems, and 
our practice of assigning relative rank in classes. 

More detailed information about the Jesuit schools 
may be found in Barnard's American Journal of 
Education YoFs. Y., YI. and XXYII. 



CHAPTER y. 

SOME CHARACTEEISTICS OF EDUCATION IN THE SEVEN- 
TEENTH CENTUEY. 

During the iTtli century we are not to look for any 
material change in tlie subject-matter of education. 
The struggle of the preceding age had, as we have 
seen, secured, in the schools and universities, a reas- 
onable degree of conformity to the best means of 
culture then available. The ancient classical litera- 
ture, with the correlated grammar and rhetoric, and 
with logic in an improved form applied to the study 
of the ancient orators and philosophers, had gained 
firm foothold in the schools. Mathematical studies^ 
confined mostly to the universities, were more largely 
used in this century than in the preceding one,, 
though arithmetic and algebra had not yet by any- 
means attained their complete form. Yieta had but 
recently taken the decisive step of using letters as 
representatives of known quantities ; and Descartes^ 
during this age, introduced the use of exponents,, 
explained negative roots, and showed the number of 
positive and negative roots in equations, besides en- 
larging geometry b}^ devising analytics : moreover,. 
Kewton and Leibnitz invented the calculus only in 
the latter half of the 17th centur3\ Hence, aside 
from the Euclidean geometry, and the elements of 
arithmetic, it may be seen that the mathematics- 

(108) 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS. 109 

were hardly in a condition to admit of profitable 
study. 

History and the sciences of nature, though, as we 
have seen, their study was suggested by some of the 
preceding theorists, were, and during this age re- 
mained, in a state which made them proper subjects 
for professorial research, rather than for the study 
of young men. Sir Francis Bacon, during this cen- 
tury, showed how this research should be conducted 
in the sciences ; but not until the following century 
■did Rollin attempt a work of this kind for history. 
Hence we should feel no surprise that the chief 
subjects of study during the 17th century were lan- 
guages and their immediate accessories ; nor are we 
warranted in concluding on this account that there 
was any marked lack of conformity to the existing 
means of culture. 

The aim of education in this, as in the preceding 
■century, in both universities and secondary schools, 
was wholly a practical one, utilitarian rather than 
disciplinary in its purpose, viz., the attainment of 
eloquence in the Latin tongue ; and the imitation of 
the ancient authors was considered the essential 
means for attaining this end. To gain " verba et 
res," words and matter, was hence the care of teach- 
-ers for their pupils. Authors were read, nominally 
at least, for both words and matter, though it is to be 
presumed that the words gained the lion's share of 
attention. 

Why this purpose of instruction should at that 



110 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

time prevail, grew out of two facts, as Paulsen ba& 
shown for Germany, and these facts were equally 
true for the rest of the learned world. 1st. Since 
medicine was then held in low esteem, and teaching 
was far from having become an independent voca- 
tion, there were then but two learned careers open to 
young men, the church and the service of the state, 
i. e., theology and jurisprudence, to both of which 
skill in the use of language was essential. 2d. The 
learned world was possessed by an idea similar to that 
which was held by the mediaeval Byzantines, that 
the ancient Greeks had exhausted all the possibilities 
of science ; and that consequently the work of learned 
education was to recover what the ancients knew, 
and to use it dextrously in the tongue so long conse- 
crated to learned use. Hence the methods of all 
learned schools, dictated by this fact and this idea, 
were directed to the mastery of Latin, both spoken 
and written, for eloquence and matter, and to 
knowledge of the Greek authors for ideas and 
graces. 

The crown of all learning in this age was poetry, 
i. e., the art of making Latin verses, to some pro- 
ficiency in which it was thought that all might 
attain by due painstaking. To aid in this, collections 
were made, either by the students themselves or by 
others, of nice words, pretty phrases, and fine sentences. 
Dramas were represented to make the use of Latin 
more familiar; and Latin exercises were composed 
for all kinds of public occasions, real or imaginary, .to 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS. - 111 

make obvious the use to which the acquisitions of 
pupils might be put. In all this, the practical and 
utilitarian purpose is. sufficiently apparent. 

The men of those times were, however, under no 
delusion as to the difficulty of the undertaking which 
they proposed to students. They saw that it post- 
poned to a late period of youth the attainment of the 
wisdom which they craved, through the necessity of 
mastering its medium in two dead languages. They 
recognized this necessity as a fearful grinds and they 
freely expressed their envy of the Greeks who 
learned no language but their own. It would seem 
strange that this did not turn their attention to the 
propriety of improving and using their own vernac- 
ular languages, did we not take into account the idea 
with which they were possessed that everything worth 
knowing was embodied in the Greek and Latin 
tongues, that science was in truth a circuit already 
closed. 

Much influence must also doubtless be attributed 
to the force of ancient usage, and to the natural pride 
of a learned guild. The idea of spending time and 
effort on these languages as a fine mental gymnastic 
had evidently not occurred to this age. This idea 
was reserved to a much later period, when the true 
humanitarian spirit which considers man himself 
as more important than any of his uses, had adopted 
humanistic studies as a fit instrument for its purposes. 

With these remarks, which seem to me to be 
warranted b}^ the facts of the case as regards the 



112 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

means of education which continued to be used, let 
us proceed to observe what were the chief distin- 
guishing features in the pedagogy of the 17th century. 

These were, I think, the following, which we will 
proceed to examine in the order in which they are 
here given. 1. The marked ecclesiastical character 
and tone given to education ; 2. the influence which 
begins to be observed in education of philosophers 
like Bacon, Descartes, and Fleurj^ ; 3. the practical 
efforts of noted pedagogues and tlieorists to reform 
the methods, the spirit, and to some extent, the 
subjects of education, in which category we shall have 
occasion to include Ratich, Comenius, the Port 
Royalists, Milton, and Locke ; 4. the efforts that 
were made to promote the education of girls by Port 
Royal, by Fenelon, and by Mme. de Maintenon ; 5. 
the rise in France of the great teaching congregation, 
the Oratory of Jesus, as a rival of the Jesuits; and 6. 
the beginnings of education in America. 

The influence of ecclesiasticism in education was 
in the 17th century hardly less than in those that 
preceded it. The ancient church had certainly not 
changed its position of the absolute authority of 
the church in all that concerns the education of youth, 
and had with great sagacity met the demands for a 
better and more wide-spread instruction, by the estab- 
lishment of the order of Jesuits, one of whose chief 
functions was to teach, w^iose teachers were all 
clerics and devoted to the interests of the papal see, 
and whose schools during this century spread rapidly 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS. 113 

over Europe, bearing wherever they went the dom- 
inance of an ecclesiastical influence. The Port 
Royalists and the Oratorians, to be considered later, 
were other Catholic teaching bodies, of different and 
even antagonistic type, but equally [controlled by 
ecclesiastics. 

Amongst the adherents to the Reformation, the 
influence of the clerical element in the schools was 
hardly less marked. The most prominent teachers 
were clergymen, nominally if not really : the super- 
vision of schools was in the hands of the clergy • 
■creeds and confessions, catechisms and church 
dogmas, had a prominent place in instruction : and 
the purpose that was declared in the foundation of 
scliools was usually the promotion of church interests, 
under whatever form of words it was veiled. Thus 
the early German school ordinances — for example 
that of the Palatinate — which became models for 
this century and the next, premising that the schools 
exist "not only to instruct the youth in all kinds of 
good arts, discipline and wisdom," but that "they 
may provide wholesome and pious uses for the church 
and the common fatherland," ordain tliat " by each 
and every pupil of the schools, the fear of God shall 
first of all be had in observance, and in accordance 
with the same shall they live in all their industry 
-and conversation. — To this end shall all and every 
pupil be bound to no other than our princely (Kur- 
fiirstlichen) reformed catechism used in the city of 
Heidelberg," in which it is directed that every class 



114 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

be "most industriously taught memoriter." The 
rod is prescribed for those who go to sleep during 
morning and evening prayers or who absent them- 
selves therefrom, as well as for those who curse or 
connive at cursing. In the words of K. Schmidt : * 
" They can look upon the scliool only as a dependent 
of the ecclesiastical class, as a daughter of the church; 
and are not yet able to distinguish school and church 
as two independent moral organisms, having each its 
own sphere and living its own life." It may be re- 
marked that the emancipation of the schools from 
ecclesiastical dominance made little progress until the 
19th century. 

Unfortunately the tendency of the ecclesiastical 
spirit in this, as in other ages, under whatever name 
it was known, was to put upon its dogmas and confes- 
sions the stamp of authority, and then so to extend 
the domains of authority as to encroach more and 
more upon the legitimate realms of human specula- 
tion and investigation, thus forging new fetters for 
thought and striving to limit its freedom in exploring 
the still-undiscovered regions of mind and matter. It 
was the ever-recurring fear lest new discoveries which 
clash with received opinions and demand their modi- 
fication, may in some way undermine the very 
foundations of eternal truth, — a fear which, proved 
groundless in one age, is sure to recur in a new form 
in succeeding ages. 

To this hampering tendency of the ecclesiastical 

* Geschichte der Padagogik. Vol. III., p. 130. 



SOME CHAKACTEEISTICS. 115 

spirit, which was strong in educational institutions, 
and which threatened to neutralize the results of the 
Humanitarian revolution, a wholesome corrective 
was presented by the rising influence of the great 
17th century philosophers, Sir Francis Bacon and 
Descartes, and to a less degree, of men like Fleury. 
Prof. Compayre in his " Critical History of the 
Doctrines of Education in France," forcibly remarks 
in substance that every weighty philosophic system 
has in it the germs of a special influence upon peda- 
gogy, and hence is of the greatest interest in the 
history of education. Nowhere is this more true than 
of the systems of Bacon and Descartes, though neither 
philosopher had education immediately in view. 

Bacon, 1521-1626, by recalling the minds of men 
from barren scholastic speculations, and from exclu- 
sive humanistic study, to the relief of man's estate 
through the investigation of nature by exact observa- 
tion and rigorous experiment leading to induction of 
her laws, — not only inspired the reformatory ejfforts 
of Comenius, tlie greatest schoolman of any age; but 
enlarged the resources of pedagogy by a whole new 
realm of profitable study, and by a method which has 
proved itself powerful in instruction as well as in 
investigation. Both the subject and the method had^ 
indeed been vaguely discerned as important and 
suggested as desirable, in the 16th century by men 
like Rabelais and Yives : it was left to Bacon to 
show how only, the knowledge of the one might be- 
brought to the requisite degree of certainty, and the 



116 THE HISTORY OF MODEEN EDUCATION. 

use of the other could lead to reliable results. Our 
own age is a witness to the great gain that has thus 
accrued to pedagogy. The century in which he died 
witnessed the rise of that brilliant galaxy of English 
scientists and thinkers of which Sir Isaac ]N"ewton 
and Jeremy Taylor are the brightest stars, who built 
on the foundations which he had laid. 

Had Descartes, 1596-1650, contributed to education 
nothing more than the fundamental maxim of his 
method, he would have deserved long remembrance 
in its history. This maxim, which was as far-reach- 
ing in the domain of speculation as w^as Bacon's 
method in the realm of nature, is this, " never to 
receive for true anything that is not known to be such 
upon reliable evidence : and to comprise no more in 
our judgments than what is so clearly presented to 
our minds that we have no occasion to call it in 
question." The first part of this maxim deals a death 
blow at the claims of unsupported authority which 
too often contravene sound human reason, and asserts 
for the human mind its supreme right to think undis- 
turbed by aught save the demands of thought itself : 
the last part formulates the proper law of thought, 
that it ma}^ avoid the danger of vague and unwar- 
ranted generalizations, and reach results worthy of 
respect. In the application of his maxim, he demands 
that the subject of thought be exactly analyzed, that 
this analysis be carried as far as possible before any 
conclusion is drawn, and that then, from the parts 
thus clearly revealed, a definite whole of thought shall 



SOME CHAKACTERISTICS. IIT 

be formed by a right use of judgment, a procedure 
which is as vahiable in pedagogy as in philosophy. 

The affirmation which Descartes makes of the 
natural equality in human beings of latent power, or 
prepotency, to distinguish clearly and to reason justly, 
which however needs education that a good use may- 
be made of it, would have as its natural corollary the 
doctrine that human inequality is due entirely to the 
kind of education that is received, and that hence the 
best instruction is the right of all, and not merely the 
privilege of a few. Probably few educators of the 
present day, however they might be willing to accept 
the deduction from Descartes' idea, would be willing 
to concede the native equal prepotency of minds, or 
to claim for education an omnipotent power in mak- 
ing men. Nor would many agree with his opinion, 
quoted by Sir William Hamilton in a slashing attack 
on mathematics as a means of mental discipline, that 
the mathematics are positively pernicious as discipline, 
since they disaccustom men to use reason in the mode 
which the conduct of life demands.* Doubtless 
Descartes had earned the right to express a weighty 
opinion on such a point, by his eminent services in 
promoting mathematical science ; yet we may be per- 
mitted to think that the speculative philosopher had 
incautiously pushed too far an objection which would 
be valid only when urged against a too exclusive 
preoccupation with mathematical studies. 

Finally Descartes like Bacon, insisted on the need 
of making ample provision of facts and real knowl- 

* Edinburgh Review, Jan. 1836. 



118 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

edge before striving to formulate opinions or to 
construct theories. In this regard, Bacon says in sub- 
stance that if one who has not duly informed himself, 
undertakes despite his ignorance to shape reasonings 
and to write elegant phrases, it is "as if he wished to 
weigh and measure or adorn the wind." There is, 
however, a marked difference in that for which the 
two philosophers chiefly value facts; for while Bacon 
regards them as materials by whose right use we may 
attain wide-reaching general principles, Descartes looks 
upon them rather as means for strengthening the 
mind by the active exertion of its powers in their 
acquisition, that when thus strengthened it may be- 
come capable of discovering truth, a distinct approach, 
it may be observed, to a disciplinary view of studies. 

It resulted from their different estimate of the use 
of facts, that Bacon has become the father of modern 
science, which by the use of his method is gaining an 
ever-increasing power to use the forces of the universe 
for the amelioration of man's condition; whilst Des- 
cartes, illustrious as a speculative philosopher and 
still more illustrious as a mathematician, did little of 
permanent worth when he applied himself to the 
study of nature. The influence on pedagogy of their 
principles and methods has been very weighty, and in 
that point of view alone, are we concerned here to 
regard them. 

The Abbe Fleury, 1640-1723, whose fame as 
an impartial church historian has quite eclipsed his 
reputation as a philosopher, is yet regarded by his 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS. 119 

countryman Prof. Compayre, as worthy of treat- 
ment in the latter respect ; and from his interesting 
analysis of Fleury's treatise on the " Choice and Meth- 
ods of Studies," I give here in condensed form what 
seem to me his most important educational opinions. 
His pedagogic experience, it may be remarked, had 
been gained as tutor to several of the French princes. 
Hence he disclaims any purpose to express any views 
onpuMic education, which he says he had not exam- 
ined sufficiently to warrant hira in doing. It will 
readily be seen that the good abbe is rather a peda- 
gogic theorist than a philosopher in his ideas. We 
may easily omit his censures of the scholastics and the 
pedants, whom the previous age had sufficiently and 
effectively belabored. What is most interesting in his 
opinions, is the aim that he proposes for education, 
and the classification of studies that he proposes. 

1. Expressing a profound dissatisfaction with the 
education current in his time (1686), and considering 
it solely on its intellectual side, he makes its aim a 
two-fold one, first to make honest men, and then to 
make skilful ones. In other words intellectual cul- 
ture should be so pursued as to attain completeness of 
manhood, while serving as "an apprenticeship for 
life," — an aim considerably more elevated than was 
usual in that age, though it may be doubted whether 
he considered it in its fullest sense as I have ex- 
pressed it. He recognizes inattention as the most 
formidable obstacle to the attainment of his aim, and 
.of this he had had a striking example in one of the 



120 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

princely pupils he had known, who was, says Com- 
payre " inattention personified." He traces the cause 
of this inattention to the fact that abstract truths and 
general formulas are presented to the child at an age 
when he can understand only the concrete and indi- 
vidual ; and he proposes the true remedy for this, by 
presenting to the pupil, wherever possible, sensible 
objects, pictures and diagrams, and by striving in all 
ways to make instruction attractive. We shall see 
later the ingenious expedients resorted to by Fenelon, 
the colleague of Fleury, to render instruction both in- 
telligible and attractive. 

2. In his classification of the subjects of instruc- 
tion, he makes two great divisions, one of which in- 
cludes the knowledge that is needful for all, and the 
other the studies which belong only to the privileged 
class. Every one, he thinks, should have his part of 
instruction, but "the poor have no need to know how 
to read and write." The knowledge needful for all, 
in his view is, hygiene, morals, and logic ; by which 
he means the ability to preserve bodily health, to 
recognize and practise one's duties, and to reason cor- 
rectly on what may meet one in daily life. In re- 
gard to the last, great emphasis is laid on clear and 
distinct ideas, and on a right understanding of the 
language that is used. All this Fleury seems to think 
the poor can gain so as to be honest and capable in 
their stations, by examples and practice, without liter- 
ary knowledge, without preparatory discipline, and 
with only the vaguest suggestion of any definite 



SOME CHARACTEEISTICS. 121 

teachers. Such a scheme would be obviously imprac- 
ticable when applied to the masses of mankind, al- 
though doubtless life furnishes us a few remarkable 
exceptions; and, were skilled teachers supplied, they 
would soon find that the quickest way to reach the 
purpose of elementary physical, moral, and intellect- 
ual education would include a fair share of the liter- 
ary culture which Fleury designedly omits. 

The studies which belong only to the richer classes 
are separated into three great groups, viz., necessary 
studies, itseful studies, and studies which are mere 
objects of enlightened curiosity, — a classification 
which can hardly fail to suggest Herbert Spencer's 
more elaborate scheme. What Fleury deems neces- 
sary studies are grammar, — by which I judge that 
he means the mastery of the vernacular on which he 
lays great emphasis, — arithmetic, economy, or a 
knowledge of things needful for life and how to pro- 
cure and use them, and, curiously enough, law, a first 
suggestion of that civic instruction, on which just 
now so much emphasis is beginning to be laid. Use- 
ful but not strictly necessary studies, are history, 
logic, geometry, physics in which are included anato- 
my and cosmxOgraphy, and languages like Latin which 
are to be used as means. As merely Curious studies,. 
Fleury counts Greek, the modern languages, the an- 
cient poets, mathematics save the elements of arith- 
metic and geometry, astronomy, the fine arts and 
designing. 

In regard to the useful studies, he considers Latin 



122 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

useful only in so far as it is a means of gaining what 
knowledge is embodied in it, and as a medium of 
communication with learned foreigners. He ascribes 
to it no disciplinary value, and contrary to the prac- 
tice of his age, he would have in its study but a small 
amount of prose composition, and no making of 
verses save sufficient to learn the rules of quantity, 
and he doubts whether these are worth the trouble of 
learning them. On the other hand, as necessary^ he 
would have the pupil make a careful study of his 
native '[ language ; and he sharply criticizes those 
who neglect their vernacular to devote themselves to 
Latin, "not considering," he says, " that the Eomans 
wrote in their own language and not in Greek." He 
recommends that the pupil be practised in French 
composition, writing " first narrations, then letters and 
other easy pieces, next biographic accounts of great 
men, and commonplaces of morals ; avoiding nonsense 
and false thoughts, let him express with gravity his 
real sentiments." 

It is interesting to observe that what European 
writers on education are apt to call the Americaniza- 
tion of studies, meaning doubtless the emphasis laid 
on what is likely to be useful in a man's future career, 
was first proposed as a definite scheme more than 
two centuries ago by this eminent French historian 
and philosopher ; and that he possibly goes farther in 
this direction than Americans would be willing to 
follow him at present. 

As respects the arrangement of studies, Fleury 



SOME CHAEACTEEISTICS. 123 

would defer formal grammar to the age of ten years 
on account of its abstract character ; would introduce 
logic at the age of twelve, which is much too early ; 
and would have several lines of study carried on 
together, in order to develop the faculties simulta- 
neously, and to guard against ennui by letting one 
study afford relief from another. Above all, he in- 
sists on the training of the judgment, while neglecting 
in his treatment of education, the cultivation of the 
sensibilities and the will, a curious oversight in a 
French ecclesiastic who was one of the most morally 
upright men of his age. 

I have named as a third characteristic of the 
17th century, that we have in it the beginning of 
a struggle to introduce practical reforms into the 
methods and spirit of education, and to widen the 
range of school subjects beyond the narrow and too 
exclusively Humanistic limits of Sturm and the Jes- 
uits, whom we may here consider as types. This 
struggle on the same lines has been continued to the 
present day. Under whatever name carried on, it has 
been an effort, not always well-judged, to adjust the 
school subjects in conformity with the demands of 
an advancing culture, and to conform the methods 
and spirit of instruction to the real or supposed na- 
ture of the developing mind of the child, which too 
often was very imperfectly understood. 

The leaders in this contest, whom Yon Raumer 
terms Innovators (]S"euerer) without intending to 
imply either praise or blame in the name he gives 



124 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

them, were naturally enthusiasts, and hence liable ta 
be unmeasured in their criticism of what they would 
reform, and disinclined to consider duly, in the 
changes which they proposed, the limits of the prac- 
ticable. Thus reactions were sure to succeed to 
untimely and hence unsuccessful efforts at advance- 
ment ; and we shall be likely to see considerable 
oscillations in educational opinions and practice in the 
course of this struggle, whilst on the whole a sensible 
progress may be observed towards the adoption of 
whatever in the purposes of the Innovators experience 
has proved to be judicious. 

We have seen already in the most sagacious 
spirits of the 16th century, in men like Erasmus and 
Yives, Rabelais and Montaigne, obvious indications 
of an opinion that classical studies and efforts for 
classic purity of expression, were occupying too ex- 
clusive attention, and that very considerable changes 
were needed in the modes in which subjects were 
presented. They have demanded a larger place in 
instruction for history, mathematics, and the sciences 
of nature. They have shown that instruction may 
be made more profitable to the pupils by being in- 
vested with a living interest, and have in general 
terms suggested objective methods as a means for 
assuring such an interest. 

Under the impulse of such previously- expressed 
theories, and inspired by the rising philosophic spirit 
of the 17th century, of which Bacon and Descartes 
were the most eminent representatives, the educa- 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS. 125 

tional Reformers of this age began a gallant crusade, 
destined to be of long duration, against exclusive- 
ness in the choice of studies, and against antiquated, 
ineffective, and time-wasting methods in the practice 
of the schools. 

In the efforts of the Reformers, we shall be able to 
distinguish, I think, certain great fundamental points 
of general agreement amid many minor individual 
variations in opinion or in application of the same 
principle. In the second volume of his " Geschichte 
der Piidagogik " pp. 5-8, Yon Raumer formulates as 
fundamentals, eighteen principles of the Innovators, 
in what seems to me a probably-unconscious spirit of 
hostile criticism. * From what Yon Raumer has 
given, containing some propositions held by but few 
of the Reformers, I have selected nine in which there 
is, I think, a pretty substantial agreement among, 
them. These we will consider in the next chapter ; 
and they will furnish an appropriate introduction to 
an account of some of the most famous Reformers, 
while saving us the trouble of much wearisome repe- 
tition. They will, indeed, serve as a standard with 
which we may readily compare the efforts and the 
practice of many individuals. 

* These wiU be found translated in Barnard's Journal Vol. VI. p. 459, 
in whicli is also given some account of Jesuit intrigues for the subversion 
of rival schools, as well Catholic as Protestant. 



CHAPTER YI. 

PRINCIPLES OF THE EDUCATIONAL KEFOEMEKS. 

In the last chapter, after observing what were the 
general facts in virtue of which the educational his- 
tory of the 17th century has a somewhat special 
character, which differentiates it from the ages that 
preceded it ; we entered upon a closer consideration 
of the extent to which ecclesiastical influence domin- 
ated the education that was given ; and of the 
counteraction to this influence which began to manifest 
itself as a consequence of the acceptance of the 
Baconian and Cartesian philosophic doctrines. At 
the close of that chapter, I gave a general view of 
the purposes that the race of Reformers which then 
arose, strove to attain. Let us now consider in some 
detail the fundamental educational principles in re- 
gard to which there is substantial agreement among 
them. These were accompanied in individual in- 
stances, it may be remarked, with erratic and 
unreasonable views, whicli will be best considered 
when the occasions arise. Omitting such cases, and in 
some instances putting into a single statement what 
would seem to be only different phases of the same 
principle, I will state Yon Raumer's eighteen propo- 
sitions, under the form of nine principles. 

(1) The Reformers insist on conformity to nature 
in the processes of education, yet frequently without 

(126) 



PRINCIPLES OF THE EEFORMEES. 127 

distinct ideas of what such conformity implies. For 
example, we shall find Comenius, the greatest of 
them all, drawing abundant strained analogies with 
the course of external nature in support of some of 
his propositions ; not distinguishing the nature of the 
youthful mind which is to be counted with, from the 
phenomena of the material universe, which, however 
striking may be their analogies with parts of the 
educative process, have really nothing to do with it. 

(2) They oppose as a dead cram of memory the 
practice hitherto prevailing, especially among the 
philologists, of requiring much to be committed to 
memory which was not at all understood. " They 
desire to enliven instruction, since they take into 
account the understanding of children, in just the 
same measure that they postpone the exertion of 
memory." Hence they insist that nothing be mem- 
orized until it is understood, thus appealing to the 
memory through the understanding, and thereby 
fostering the intellectual activity of the child. 

(3) Insisting with apparent justice that hitherto 
mere mechanical processes have held the place of 
methods, they offer a method of proceeding from 
the simplest, most obvious, and easiest elements of 
every subject, gradually unfolding its complex parts, 
and so advancing to the completed science by steps 
nicely graduated to the growing powers of the child. 
In this way they have sanguine hopes that the acqui- 
sition of knowledge will be made rapid as well as 
delightful, and that the necessity of punishment 



128 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

will thereby be obviated. Some of them, like Come- 
nius, prepared text-books to illustrate this method 
which were lono^ in use, presumably with more 
satisfactory results than heretofore had attended in- 
struction, and which we shall have occasion to notice 
hereafter. 

(4) They emphasize the importance of the vernac- 
ular as the common study of all pupils, without 
which, as has before been said, anything like uni- 
versal education is obviously impossible. At the 
outset, the Reformers contented themselves with 
insisting that the native tongue should be taught 
before the Latin or parallel with it, and that the 
learning of Latin should be made easier by its aid ; 
and the school books of Comenius, as we shall see, 
were intended to facilitate the acquisition of Latin 
together with all useful hnowledge^ by the aid of the 
vernacular. But the literary growth of modern 
languages, as well as the eiforts of the Eeformers, has 
tended constantly to push the Latin more and more 
into the background ; until, from being supreme in 
the realm of learning, and the consecrated vehicle of 
all that is worth knowing, it has been reduced to play 
the wholly subordinate, yet still very useful part, of 
disciplining some of the noblest powers of youth, 
— an office which was little thought of at the time 
which we are considering. 

(5) The Reformers have insisted from the outset, 
and since that time with constantly increasing em- 
phasis, upon the claims in instruction of those great 



PEINCIPLES OF THE REFORMERS. 129 

groups of studies which the Germans designate as 
Real studies, i. e., those in which skill in the use of 
language serves only as a convenient instrument for 
the expression of ideas. Thus Comenius and Milton 
and Locke would have Latin mastered as a means of 
" conveying to us things useful to be known ; " whilst 
Basedow and Pestalozzi, Bain and Herbert Spencer, 
would remit it to Fleury's class of studies merely 
curious, and would strive after Beal knowledge by 
the aid of the vernacular, with modern languages as 
possible convenient auxiliaries. In close alliance 
with this insistence on Real studies, has been the em- 
phasis laid on proper care of the body and cultivation 
of its powers. This we shall see abundantly in the 
treatises of Milton and Locke, of Rousseau and the 
German Reformers, and in the widely influential 
treatise on Education by Herbert Spencer. 

(6) A leading article of faith amongst the Reform- 
ers has always been a belief in the primary importance 
of cultivating the powers of observation through 
which we gain our introduction to the object world, 
and without whose accurate use they have believed 
that all our intellectual operations would be likely to 
be clouded with doubt or vitiated by error. The 
training of the senses had already been suggested by 
the preceding theorists : with the Reformers, it has 
become a principle, l^o doubt there has been a re- 
markable lack of skill in many of the efforts to give 
a systematic training to observation ; yet despite all 
failures, the present age is more than ever convinced 



130 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

of its value and its necessity, as is witnessed by the 
establishment, in our higher institutions, of labora- 
tories for all sciences. 

An integral part of this principle, is a conviction 
of the necessity of utilizing in instruction the child's 
previous experiences, that he may become conscious 
of their relations to the various subjects he pursues ; 
and also of the expediency of requiring application 
of what has been learned, that it may be exposed to 
no risk of becoming mere dead knowledge lodged in 
the mind, but may promote faculty or the ability to 
act in accordance with what is known. 

(7) The Reformers have, it seems to me, been 
criticized with undue severity by Yon Raumer, for 
the emphasis that has been laid by all the later ones, 
on the need that pupils should embody ideas as soon 
as they are clearly grasped in proper words and cor- 
rect forms of expression. If indeed in some cases 
this principle has been so unskilfully applied as " to 
unduly hasten the natural course of development of 
children," or " to promote an unnatural and unchild- 
like introspection and self-observation," it can hardly 
invalidate the proposition that even as a body with- 
out the spirit is dead, so a spirit without embodiment 
is likely to be evanescent, and that hence the stock 
of really useful ideas cannot greatly transcend the 
powers of definite expression. Recall to mind in 
this connection, Montaigne's pregnant expression about 
clear ideas and the ability to clothe them in language. 

(8) There has been an undoubted disposition 



PRINCIPLES OF THE EEFOEMEES. 131 

amongst all the Reformers to magnify the useful a& 
means of education, and to prefer such a training a& 
may assure worldly success. We have already seen 
that this has been termed with somewhat opprobrious 
meaning, the Americanization of education, yet it is 
very far from being an idea of American origin, as 
we have recently seen in the scheme of the Abbe 
Fleury, and as we shall have abundant occasion to 
observe hereafter. This idea is wont to be still far- 
ther stigmatized as devotion to " bread and butter 
studies." A not wholly unfair answer to such appeals 
to prejudice would be to demand the converse, i. e., 
the employment of studies obviously useless, merely 
as a mental gymnastic. A fair statement of the ques- 
tion would possibly be this, that chief emphasis in 
education should be laid on the development of the 
powers and capabilities of youth ; that studies should 
be selected and arranged with chief reference to this 
purpose ; but that, as between studies equally adapted 
to this end, either singly or in combination, the choice 
should always fall upon those which will best subserve 
the uses of life : and an additional reason for such 
choice is found in the natural utilitarianism of the 
young, who are always most readily interested in that 
of which they can see the use. Without interest 
there is apt to be little self-activity, and so, little real 
development of powers and capabilities. 

(9) The greatest fault of the Reformers, I am in- 
clined to think, is and has been, that in fact rather 
than in theory, they neglect the educational use and 



132 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

lience the cultivation of the imagination. In this 
Yon Ranmer's indictment is possibly just though 
somewhat sweeping. He says " There is with them 
no thought of the BeautifuL Music, drawing, &c., 
they teach in a rationalistic and anti-artistic fashion : 
all poetry is thrust into the back-ground, or else 
treated with loveless and joyless coldness: we kill 
poems by analyzing and interpreting them." Severe 
words, yet useful, if they serve to direct our attention 
to a fault that it may be amended. 

For it admits of little doubt that not only in the 
relish for poetry and the fine arts is there a legitimate 
work for all schools, but also that in the ordinary 
duties of instruction there is a wide sphere of useful- 
ness for the realizing 2ind picturing imagination, and 
that without it, very many studies like geography, 
history, literature of all kinds, and even ordinary 
lessons in reading, lose a large part of their value. 

These then are what seem to me to be in general 
the fundamental ideas and tendencies of the educa- 
tional Reformers, nearly all of which will, I suppose, 
<iommend themselves to our acceptance as worthy to 
be incorporated in educational practice, and likely in 
most cases to make the results of instruction better 
and more acceptable than they have yet become. It 
will now be useful to inquire, to what is due the la- 
tent and open opposition which such ideas have met, 
and the tardiness with which they are becoming ef- 
fective in education ; for we must bear in mind that 
it is nearly three centuries since this reformatory 
movement began. 



PRINCIPLES OF THE EEFORMEES. 133' 

Doubtless the most formidable obstacle which the 
innovations proposed by the Reformers have had to 
encounter, has been the intellectual conservatism of 
mankind. In virtue of this, men preoccupied with old 
ideas, and accustomed to old methods, are indisposed 
to listen to novelties, and still less disposed to accept 
them. Outside of the schools and the circle of school- 
men, too few people are inclined to trouble themselves 
with school questions, of the nature and reasons of 
which they have no definite idea, while they have still 
less comprehension of the results which are likely to 
flow from proposed changes. They leave all these to 
the experts, to the school-men. But the older, more 
experienced, and more influential among these, already 
habituated to other ideas and modes of work which 
they feel unable readily to change, are likely to 
oppose to novelties, not merely inertia, but active 
hostility, not less weighty because blinded by preju- 
dice. It demands more than ordinary pedagogic 
genius to keep the mind always open, at all periods 
of life, to the access of new ideas, and to retain an 
always unbiassed judgment in the examination of 
such ideas. 

It is therefore chiefly among the younger teachers, 
who are not yet fixed in an immovable routine, that 
new educational ideas and methods must look for 
their first converts, and work their slow and painful 
way towards a more general acceptance. Where sem- 
inaries for the training of teachers exist, and are in 
the hands of zealous and progressive men, ideas of 



134 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

approved merit are more rapidly disseminated and 
utilized in the schools ; but such seminaries were un- 
known in the lYth century, and but little known in 
the 18th. Hence, when we consider the first obstacle 
only, there is small reason to wonder that the prin- 
<}iples of the Innovators made but slow progress. 

The second obstacle that was to be overcome exist- 
ed in the very nature of the changes that were pro- 
posed. They were novel in the very highest degree ; 
and, as Yon Raumer aptly remarks, they widened the 
pedagogic horizon so excessively that the unaccus- 
tomed sight could not compass it. They ran counter 
in nearly every respect to the current ideas and the 
current practice of the age. The set of school studies, 
as we have already seen, was almost exclusively in the 
direction of Greek and Latin authors : the Reformers 
demanded that the curriculum should be enlarged by 
the addition of many new studies, for which in many 
cases books suitable for school use were lacking, and 
for all which no teachers were at hand, learned in the 
subjects and trained to present them properly. Latin 
was the common language of the schools, and was con- 
secrated there by an immemorial use : the Reformers 
ask that it shall abdicate its exclusive empire in favor 
of vernacular tongues. 

The usage of the schools appealed almost solely to 
the memory through the agency of persistent drill, 
without any too curious inquiry as to the adaptation 
of subjects to the student's capacity, in the blind con- 
fidence that at some future period what was mem- 



PEINCIPLES OF THE REFORMERS. 136 

orized might come to be understood : the Reformers 
demand that henceforth subjects shall be graded to 
the abilities of pupils, and that nothing shall go into 
the memory which has not previously passed through 
the crucible of the judgment and understanding, — 
thus asking of teachers that they shall exchange an 
€asy and mechanical customary routine for a method 
which would require of them an activity of spirit as 
incessant as should be the efforts expected from the 
pupils. 

The power of acute and accurate observation had 
become well-nigh atrophied in both teachers and pu- 
pils by ancestral disuse : the Reformers ask that this 
dormant power shall at once be called into active use, 
in the interest of the understanding, and for the pur- 
poses of instruction. Hitherto the body had been 
left to care for itself, with the usual result of devas- 
tating epidemics ; and school-rooms had from medi. 
seval times been dark, gloomy, and full of evil smells: 
the Reformers demand now that the body shall be 
duly cared for by the observance of the ordinary con- 
ditions of healthy living ; and that communities shall 
at once be at the expense of supplying as suitable ac- 
commodations for the nurture of their children, at 
least as they do for the keeping of their horses. 

We need go no farther in this contrast of what had 
«o far been, and what is now demanded in the way of 
change. It will readily be seen that however reason- 
able all these demands may seem to us, they would 
naturally appear excessive to the men of the 17th and 



136 THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

18th centuries ; that thej would be likely to appear 
to them, not a series of needful changes, but a com- 
plete revolution ; and that so vast a widening of the 
pedagogic horizon would require generations to pre- 
pare the unaccustomed vision to compass it, in its full 
extent. This consideration may possibly prepare us 
not to judge too harshly of the tardiness in reforms 
of the two centuries preceding our own ; especially 
if we reflect that we have not yet fully reached the 
measure of what ought to be expected from us. 

We have seen that two obstacles to the ready ac- 
ceptance of proposals for educational reforms grew 
respectively out of the inertia of human nature, and 
out of the novelty of the proposed changes. A third 
obstacle sprang from a source that would hardly be 
anticipated, and that was from the Reformers them- 
selves. Enthusiastic as they were, and deeply pene- 
trated with a conviction of the value and necessity of 
what they proposed, they yet had not grown to the 
full measure of their own ideals. Astonished as they 
doubtless were, at the inertness of their contempora- 
ries, like them, they had themselves great need of 
growth in the full apprehension of what was implied 
in the reforms which they advocated. Hence they were 
not always completely in harmony with their own 
fundamental principles ; nor were they usually wholly 
successful in exemplifying them in practice. To 
them the ancient sarcasm " physician, heal thyself," 
might often have been justly directed. 

Reformers are not more likely to be perfect than 



PEINCIPLES OF THE REFORMEES. 137 

other men ; and sometimes the personal characteris- 
tics of the educational reformers were not such as to 
win favor to the doctrines that they preached. Thus 
their first representative, Ratich, made a dismal fail- 
ure of all his efforts, due even more to his hateful traits 
of character than to his lack of practical skill in ex- 
emplifying his principles ; and the ill success of Base- 
dow in the 18th century was due, at least in part, to 
personal causes, whilst his public was in an expectant 
and receptive mood. 

The really great Comenius often shows his lack of 
thorough comprehension of his fundamental ideas, by 
violating them again and again in the school-books 
that he wrote ; and both his text-books, and his dar- 
ling pansophic scheme, reveal how greatly he over- 
rated the powers of mental assimilation in youth, and 
how fearful a load he imposed on memory : his Janua^ 
for example, in which he treats all knowledge in a 
fragmentary way, expects a youth in mastering this 
to master 8,000 Latin words. The brilliant Rousseau 
pushes sound principles to whimsical extremes, and 
so mingles them with paradoxical expedients, as to 
leave one uncertain where to find the boundary line 
which separates principle from paradox, — thus becom- 
ing rather the inspirer than the leader of reformatory 
efforts. Even the venerated Pestalozzi, who now 
stands as the representative of the triumphing re- 
form, was distinguished rather by flashes of peda- 
gogic insight than by any firm grasp of principles, 
which he constantly violated ; and he owes his en- 



138 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

during fame to his peculiar personality rather than 
to any thorough exemplification of pedagogic prin- 
ciples. It is possible that the critical spirit which 
Yon Raumer displays in presenting the principles 
of the Reform, is aimed largely at the embodiment of 
them which he had for some time observed in Pesta- 
lozzi's often inconsistent practice. 

Besides errors arising from the imperfect appre- 
hension by the leading reformers of the demands of 
their own fundamental ideas, and which delayed the 
changes that tliey desired ; certain individual vagaries 
of opinion may possibly have caused judicious persons 
to distrust the entire scheme which they represented. 
Thus Comenius was inclined greatly to overrate the 
shaping power of school-education, and almost seemed 
to fancy that it can make of a child what it will : 
others overrated the results likely to flow from the 
methods which they advocated, like Ratich and Base- 
dow ; or joined with this a disposition to underrate 
the influence of the teacher's personality, as did Pes- 
talozzi, who dreamed that methods of instruction 
might be so mechanized that their results should de- 
pend, not on the skill of the teacher, but on the nature 
of the jprocesses that he used. The opportunities for 
Jiostile criticism which such extreme opinions in 
prominent persons would afford, can readily be imag- 
ined ; and also how easily they could be made to cloud 
with doubt the validity of an entire body of pedagog- 
ical doctrine, their connection with which was a mere 
unessential personal accident. 



PRINCIPLES OF THE KEFORMERS. 139 

Such then were the formidable obstacles which the 
struggle initiated in the lYth century for the enlarge- 
ment of the circle of studies, and for the improvement 
-of the methods of instruction, has had to meet and 
slowly to overcome. They were such as every bene- 
ficial attempt to reform existing usages has been 
obliged to surmount ; and, moreover, they were in 
their very nature such as to demand for their removal, 
generations of educational progress, and the slow 
growth of better and more enlightened opinions. 
Hence it should afford no just occasion for surprise 
that educational principles which are mostly so obvi- 
ously just, have met with an acceptance so tardy, and 
that we ourselves are called upon to be actors in the 
final stages of a crusade which was begun nearly three 
hundred years ago. May we, by learning wisdom 
from the past, prepare ourselves to act wisely our 
part, as inheritors of its experience. 



CHAPTEE YIL 

THE SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY REFOEMERS. 

Wolfgang Ratich, 157M635. 

Wolfgang Raticli or Ratbke, was the first of the 
Innovators who attempted to give a practical form to 
theories of education. He was born in Holstein in 
1571, received a good education at a gymnasium and 
at the University of Eostock, and afterwards spent a 
number of years in England and in Amsterdam, en- 
gaged in various studies, amongst which were Hebrew 
and Arabic. When about forty years old, he began 
an agitation for a reform of the methods of education. 
In 1612 he offered a memorial to the German Empire 
at the diet in Frankfort, in which he proposed with 
the help of God to show how various languages may 
be taught easily and learned more thoroughly and 
quickly than heretofore ; how schools may be estab- 
lished in which all arts and sciences may be thoroughly 
learned ; and " how in the whole kingdom one and 
the same speech, one and the same government, and 
finally one and the same religion, m^ay be commodi- 
ously and peacefully maintained." 

This memorial attracted favorable attention from 
some of the German princes who supplied him with 
money for his enterprise and appointed two learned 
commissions to examine his scheme. Both of these 

(140) 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY REFOEMEKS. 141 

commissions made favorable reports. Kear the close 
of his life another commission likewise reported favor- 
ably upon his ideas. From this it would appear that 
his propositions for reform were met at first, not with 
prejudiced opposition, as might have been expected, 
but rather with favor. Hence the utter failure of all 
his efforts was due, not to either of the first two ob- 
stacles mentioned in the preceding chapter, but to the 
remarkable defects of his own character. 

Yon Raumer gives a long account of Katich, which 
has been translated in Barnard Y., p. 229 ; to which 
Dr. Dittes has added much of value that has recently 
come to light in some of the letters of Ratich. Both 
these, and especially the latter, reveal his personal 
traits of character in a most unlovely light. These 
we will consider later as showing what one should not 
be to succeed as a reformer. For several years after 
his Frankfort memorial, he made unsuccessful at- 
tempts to found schools in various cities, all of which 
failed "because he would neither give a specimen of 
his method nor impart a plan," fearing lest his secret 
might be filched from him and enure to the advan- 
tage of education through some one else. Indeed 
" he had declared that he would only sell his discov- 
eries to a prince at a dear rate, and upon the considera- 
tion that the men of learning to whom he should 
communicate them should promise to conceal them." 
One of his contemporaries pertinently asks " Would 
Christ, the apostles, and the prophets have done so ?" 
These were the acts of a charlatan peddling some 



142 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

secret quack nostrum, and as a charlatan he was dis- 
credited in South Germany. 

Yet in 1618, he found two princes who were influ- 
enced to aid him, the Duke of Weimar, and his 
relative, Ludwig of Anhalt-Kothen. Under their 
patronage he went to Kothen, where learned men 
were engaged as his assistants, and a printing house 
established to prepare text-books embodying his meth- 
od in six languages. After more than a year spent 
in preparation, the long-expected school opened in 
June. 1619, with about 430 boys and girls divided 
into two divisions, a lower and an upper one, each of 
these having two or three grades. In the lower were 
taught in German the usual elementary branches, the 
upper division advanced to Latin and then to Greek. 

Soon complaints from the inspectors, then quarrels 
of Ratich with every one around, began ; he first com- 
plained to the prince, his patron, then slandered and 
insulted him ; aud in little more than four months 
from the opening of the school, we find the Didac- 
tiker, as he was called, in prison with only a Bible for 
his companion which he was advised to read and profit 
by. After several months in prison, he was released 
after signing a humble retraction of his slanders, and 
acknowledging that he had professed what he could 
not perform. 

Then he went to Magdeburg, where at first all was 
favorable to him ; but here too was repeated the same 
story as at Kothen with some variations. He quar- 
relled with the magistrates ; he intermeddled with 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY KEFOEMEES. 143 

church matters, and quarrelled with the pastor ; his 
secretive and jaunty ways offended others ; news of 
his conduct at Kothen came to add to his disfavor ; 
and in 1622 he was again without a place. For some 
years afterward he went from place to place supported 
by certain princely personages, always just about to 
do great things, but always prevented by wicked and 
envious persons who wanted to steal his precious dis- 
coveries ; he was sought out by Oxenstiern, the great 
Swedish chancellor, whom he treated somewhat cava- 
lierly; was solicited for counsel by Comenins whose 
letter he never answered ; and finally ended his un- 
happy life in 1635 at Erfurt, dogged always by evil 
spirits of his own raising. 

Aside from the fact that he was the first of the 
Innovators, the career of Katich seems to me chiefly 
useful in the history of education, as an example of 
what a successful school reformer should not be. He 
had no practical ability as a teacher or manager. At 
Kothen he did not pretend to teach himself, but only 
to impart his secret methods confidentially to his 
subordinates. Any practical experience in teaching 
might have guarded him from pretending to teach to 
old or young the mastery^ of any language in six 
months by three or four hours' study a day, — a pre- 
tension so absurd that it might justly discredit with 
judicious persons any merits that he possessed. 

He utterly lacked the worldly wisdom and prudence 
which any successful teacher should possess, and es- 
pecially if he adopts the role of a reformer. This lack 



144 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

is markedly shown in his treatment of all his benevo- 
lent patrons, and was amusingly exemplified in the 
case of Oxenstiern, who told Comenius that after he 
had taken great trouble to see Katich, the latter, in- 
stead of granting him an interview, sent him a thick 
quarto to read. " I surmounted the tedious work," 
says the Swedish chancellor, "and after running 
through the whole book, I saw that he depicts the 
faults of the schools not badly, but the remedy which 
he proposes for them, seemed to me insufficient." 

His faults of character, as they are depicted in his 
letters, as well as in his career, were such as to unfit 
him for any infiuence among men. He was conceited 
and boastful to an astonishing degree, ready always to 
vaunt what he could do to an extent that only the 
greatest performance could justify, and that his 
failures made ridiculous. Without ability to direct, 
he was arrogant and tyrannical to all who were about 
him ; he had a violent and slanderous tongue which 
he did not restrain from blaming and speaking ill of 
his benefactors as well as of his coadjutors ; he was 
quarrelsome, as we have seen ; his suspicious temper 
disposed him continually to conjure up phantom ene- 
mies who were laying tra^s to surprise his secrets ; 
and withal, he had no real love for the profession that 
he pretended to reform, no deep and abiding interest 
in its well-being, but merely a petty self-seeking de- 
sire to reap profit and credit from his discoveries, 
accompanied by a haunting fear that some one might 
forestall him in this. Dr. Dittes thus sums up the 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY REFORMERS. 145 

lesson of his life : " Moreover his career is an eloquent 
proof of this truth, that theory alone is no surety for 
practical success in teaching : that this rather presup- 
poses skill, patience, worldly prudence, unbiassed 
sense, and before all, pure devotion to the idea of 
human culture free from vanity and personal ambi- 
tion." 

But it may reasonably be asked, had then Ratich's 
ideas no merit ? Undoubtedly. His great merit, in 
my opinion, is that he first conceived the need and 
importance of a systematic art of teaching, and gave 
thereto some helpful precepts which he himself could 
not successfully exemplify in practice, and the effi- 
-ciency of which he as grossly overestimated as he 
seems to have undervalued the personal agency of the 
expert teacher, — the latter being an error into which 
unpractical methodilcers are peculiarly liable to fall. 
The commission of Giessen professors who early re- 
ported favorably on his scheme, after detailing some 
of its prominent ideas, conclude that his method " has 
its sure foundations and its definite rules which are 
-derived from the nature of the entire man, senses, 
memory, and reason, as well as from the peculiarities 
of the arts, sciences, and languages." They empha- 
size his art of teaching as enabling one "to do his 
work much more safely, surely, and perfectly," and 
say " Therefore it is necessary that there be an es- 
pecial art, in accordance with which every one who 
desires to teach may direct and guide himself, that he 
may pursue his calling, not in accordance with his 



146 THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

mere unaided judgment and guess, nor also only ac- 
cording to his inborn discretion, but in accordance 
with the art of teaching / just as he who wishes to 
sing correctly must be guided by the art of singing." 
Of the maxims which make up Ratich's Art of 
Teaching, Yon Raumer gives nine, and Schmidt 
thirteen. I will give them briefly, combining some 
with others to which they are allied, and premising 
that of those which 1 shall state, the last four and 
the first do not appear in Yon Raumer's list. 1. 
Learning, so far at least as reading and writing are 
concerned, is an universal right from which no one 
should be debarred. 2. Everything should be learned 
first in the vernacular, and pupils should proceed to 
other languages, only when they have become ready 
in their own. 3. The order and course of nature 
should be followed, proceeding from the low and 
simple to the great and high. 4. Teach but one thing, 
one language or art, one book at a time, and pass to 
no other till that is mastered ; an idea which would 
bore instead of interesting pupils, if followed. 5. 
Often repeat the same thing, repetition assuring 
memory — a maxim which Ratich applied in a most 
tiresome method of teaching languages, and which in 
this century has been the basis of the once famous 
but now exploded systems of Hamilton and Jacotot. 
6. Let nothing be learned by rote, that the under- 
standing ma}^ not be weakened. 7. Let there be uni- 
formity in all things, in books as well as methods, 
that languages and every art may be presented by 



SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY KEFORMEES. 147 

the same method and on the same plan. This ignores 
the capital fact that every chief group of studies has 
its own peculiar subject-matter, and its own special 
method, e. g., mathematics, and natural science. 8. 
Matter should be given first, and then rules and prin- 
ciples, e. g., language first, and then the grammar of 
the language. 9. " Let all be taught by exjperience 
and piece-meal investigation, and verify every rule 
by examples. 10. Let no pupil be beaten on account 
of his learning, but only for obstinacy and evil ways. 
11. Let separate schools be established for different 
languages. 12. Let each school have its special 
teacher, who shall at stated times give reports to the 
higher school authorities. No.'s 11 and 12, it may be 
seen, are merely corollaries of ]No. 4. 13. Girls should 
be instructed by proper and skilful women. 

Of these thirteen maxims, six are expressly or by 
implication, common to Ratich with the succeeding 
Reformers. His method, so far as he developed it^. 
was applied only to languages, though Helvicus, one 
of the Giessen professors, had early drawn attention 
to its applicability to science teaching. Ratich, how- 
ever, seems never to have proposed science teaching, 
and to have considered logic and rhetoric as Beal 
studies. Some of his maxims if applied would lead 
to absurdities, especially the 4th with its correlated 
11th and 12th. The 6th which is good in its proper 
place, he made the basis of an extremely tireseme 
method. The 7th might be so used, within due limits,, 
as to be useful ; yet as he states it, it is incompatible 



148 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

at present with good teaching. The first and last 
maxims, which belong not to the art of teaching but 
to school statesmanship, are now generally accepted ; 
but Ratich borrowed them from Luther. 

His career is of interest solely as being that of the 
first of the Innovators, and in any other country than 
Germany it would have remained in the oblivion to 
which failures are consigned, and from which it has 
been exhumed only by painstaking research. 

John Amos Comenius, 1592-1671. 

This great educator, organizer, and reformer was 
born in an obscure town in Moravia in 1592. His 
parents dying when he was still very young, his early 
education was greatly neglected by his guardians, so 
that he had only the barest elements of knowledge 
up to his seventeenth year, when first he was sent to 
a Latin school. As Prof. Laurie says, this belatiug of 
his education was probably an advantage to peda- 
gogy, since from the relative maturity at which he 
entered on the study of Latin, he was made more 
keenly aware of the exceeding badness of the mode 
in which it was taught, and hence was prompted to 
efforts to improve it. 

Of the schools of his boyhood he feelingly says, 
"they are the terror of boys, and the slaughter-houses 
of minds, — places where a hatred of books and liter- 
ature is contracted, where ten or more years are spent 
in learning what might be acquired in one, where 
what ought to be poured in gently is violently forced 



SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY REFORMERS. 149^* 

in, and beaten in, where what ought to be put clearly 
and perspicuously is presented in a confused and in- 
tricate way, as if it were a collection of puzzles, — 
places where minds are fed on words ; " and again he 
says, " Boyhood is distracted for years with precepts 
of grammar, infinitely prolix, perplexed, and obscure, 
and for the most part useless. Boys are stuffed with 
vocabularies without associating words with thingSy 
or indeed with one another syntactically." I quote 
here these words of his from his biographer. Prof. 
Laurie, both to show the nature of the processes 
against which he fought, and the impression that they 
made on the young scholar. 

At the age of twenty we find Comenius studying 
at the University of Herborn and later at Heidelberg ; 
at twenty-two he was teaching a village school in Mo- 
ravia, and striving to better methods by simplifying 
Latin grammar ; and at tw^enty-four he was ordained 
to the ministry of the Moravian Brethren and soon 
after married. The breaking out of the Thirty Years' 
War in 1618 disturbed his peaceful pursuits ; early in 
its course, all his property was destroyed, including 
his library and manuscripts; for some years, his life 
was spent in hiding places ; and in 1627, he was ban- 
ished from his native land never more to return. In 
his exile, his improved and simplified school-books 
and other pedagogic labors made him famous. He was 
summoned to England, to Sweden, and to Hungary 
for aid in the bettering of learning and improvement 
of schools : and in 1654 he was offered and declined. 



150 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

the presidency of Harvard college, his fame having 
reached even far distant America. His long and use- 
ful career was brought to a close in Holland in 1671. 

In skill in teaching and organizing, in freedom 
from jealousy and readiness to cooperate with others, 
in gentleness under detraction, in readiness to adapt 
himself to the men with whom he was brought in con- 
tact and to the circumstances in which he was placed, 
and in simplicity and modesty of nature, — his entire 
career and character were in marked contrast with 
those of the unhappy Ratich. He lived for others 
rather than for himself ; fame sought him rather than 
was sought by him ; and he has no need now like 
Ratich of an industrious historian to rescue his name 
and efforts from oblivion. America unites with Ger- 
many in celebrating with appropriate ceremonies the 
third centenary of his birth. 

To this brief sketch of his life, in which I have con- 
fined myself to \^hat might give insight into his 
pedagogic career, must be added this remark which 
will reveal the cause of the intense " Sense-Bealism " 
and the grasping after universal knowledge, which 
appears in all his school books. He was profoundly 
impressed with the views of Bacon ; and through the 
hold that Bacon gained upon him, the philosophic 
spirit of that age gained its most-enduring influence 
upon pedagogy. But he was troubled because " the 
noble Yerulam, while giving the true key of nature, 
did not unlock her secrets, but only showed by a few 
examples how they should be unlocked. " He dreamed 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY REFORMERS. 161 

of being one of those who should further this great 
work by "the issuing of a complete body of science 
as then understood," that investigators might clearly 
know the point from which they should start in its 
advancement. " This complete statement of the en- 
tire circle of knowledge he called Pansophia." This 
he desired to make his chief work in life. For this 
he made great collections of materials which he called 
his Silva of Pansophy, and which were burned with 
his library in Poland in 1654. His pedagogic labors 
were always with him mere incidents in a career 
which he intended chiefly to devote to pansophy ; and 
thus, like many another man, his incidental services 
were of vastly greater moment than the work which 
he really intended. His pansophic work was never 
realized, and would have been of no great service 
had it been completed ; but his pansophic ideas were 
ever with him, and color all his educational opinions 
and works. 

The services of Comenius to pedagogy were of a 
threefold character, in each of which his merit was 
very great. 1st. He was the true originator of the 
principles and methods of the Innovators ; 2d. he 
was a great educational systematist ; and 3d. he was 
the author of improved text-books which were long 
and widely famous. Let us consider him in each of 
these aspects. 

(1) There is little need to enter into detail upon the 
pedagogic principles which lie at the foundation of 
the whole method of Comenius. They are those 



152 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDTJCATION. 

which have already been described as common to all 
the reformers, with their utilitarianism and sense- 
realism strongly emphasized, and their neglect of 
imagination easily observable. Indeed he may right- 
fully be called their originator ; for, although Ratich 
had preceded him by a few years in the formulation 
of a portion of these principles, mingled however 
with vitiating errors, he had forfeited all just claims 
to priority by his jealous secretiveness, by his treat- 
ment of them as a secret nostrum for all educational 
ills, and by his utter failure to apply them to any 
practical use. Hence the honors of paternity passed 
from him to Comenius, who re-discovered them when 
discredited by failure, who sagaciously discerned their 
real value and applicability to school uses, and who 
unselfishly revealed them to the whole world embod- 
ied in a practical working scheme. 

If to Ratich is due the merit of discerning the 
necessity and value of an Art of Education, when as 
yet there was none, to Comenius belongs the honor of 
reducing this art to somewhat systematic form ; of il- 
lustrating its principles, with not a few errors in de- 
tails, such as are incident to first essays, and which 
later he acknowledged to be such errors ; and of pre- 
senting these principles in a form in which they have 
since been widely accepted. He freely acknowledges 
his indebtedness to Bacon, to Yives, and to less known 
men ; but what he drew from others, he made his 
own by the way in which he used their hints. 

His aim was knowledge, graced by virtue, and 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY REFORMERS. 153 

sanctified by piety. For the attainment of this aim 
in school training he believed in a good method as 
something absolute, and, in a certain sense mechani- 
cal in its character, as leading to surely preconceived 
results, and one might almost say, as capable of man- 
ufacturing men according to a desired pattern. It is 
easy for us to see that this was to ascribe far too great 
potency to method and to the art of teaching, and to 
lay too great a responsibility for results upon teach- 
ers ; but it was the error of a great originator in the 
primal enthusiasm of entering on a hitherto untrod- 
den way. 

His root idea was to teach all things first in their 
simplest elements, and to proceed thence in ever- 
widening circles ; to teach y>6>m things and not about 
them ; to proceed from the relatively simple to the 
more complex, from particulars to the genera], from 
the concrete to the abstract, from the vaguely known 
to the definitely apprehended, advancing ever step hy 
step and by insensible degrees. He would have all 
things presented to the senses, and to as many senses 
as possible. This is his Sense-Kealism. He insists on 
the immediate use of all things that are learned, and 
upon their repeated use, till they shape themselves 
into mental habits and develop into faculty. These 
are the best features of what we of the present day 
know as Pestalozzianism. 

A pronounced utilitarian in education, always 
however in accordance with his aim as before stated, 
he declares himself emphatically opposed to teaching 



154 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

what is useless or too special, a declaration of which 
there was but too much need in liis day, and which 
may possibly deserve to be borne in mind in all ages. 
He required that all explanations should be made clear 
as light, and that they should be proved to have been 
clear by the pupil's ability to use what had been ex- 
plained. Finally, he demands that all subjects should 
be proportioned to the age and capacity of pupils. 

To prove the conformity of his principles of method 
to nature, he is over-fond of appealing to analogies 
from external nature, and too frequently these anal- 
ogies are .whimsical even to absurdity, especially in 
the consequences sought to be derived from them. 
For these, if any one is curious enough to note the 
vagaries of a great mind, misapprehending the true 
meaning of conformity to nature and of the sort of 
nature to which we should conform, it will be easy to 
refer to Prof. Laurie's Life and Educational Works of 
Comenius pp. 84-98, where they will be found in 
abundance, as examples of his syncretic method. 

In what has here been said, I think has been pre- 
sented a brief but fair sketch of the great merits of 
his method. His plan of organization, and his famous 
books, we will now consider. 

We have already seen that Sturm had proposed a 
comprehensive and systematic organization for a 
isecondary school with a graded series of studies ex- 
tending over ten years ; and that several of the Ger- 
man states had in the 16th century, placed below their 
six-class Latin schools, also German schools in which 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY REFORMEES. 155 

should be taught the necessary elements of knowledge 
in the mother-tongue. It remained that some one 
should prepare a general scheme of organization, com- 
prehending all the years of instruction, setting to 
each its limits, and assigning to each its appropriate 
functions. This Comenius undertook with such suc- 
cess that his scheme corresponds remarkably in gen- 
eral features with our modern school organizations. 
He proposed to divide the years of pupilage from 
birth to the age of twenty-four, into four equal peri- 
ods, each of six years, and stated distinctly the part 
which each should perform in the work of developing 
progressively the powers of the child and youth. 

Up to the age of six, he would have all children 
trained at home or in maternal schools, in which the 
easy beginnings of all knowledge were to be im- 
parted, and the precious germs of correct personal and 
moral habits were to be implanted, by lessons on ob- 
jects and pictures, and by direction in the observation 
of common phenomena. The amount of time which 
Comenius assigned to this early training is now 
adopted, as is also the general subject-matter, which 
has been ingeniously wrought up into systematic form 
'during the present century by Froebel and his follow- 
ers ; but the idea which Comenius entertained, of 
expecting this instruction from the mothers of fam- 
ilies, and in which he was seconded by Pestalozzi one 
hundred and fifty years later, has been found wholly 
impracticable, as might have been anticipated by any- 
one who knew the condition of the vast majority of 



156 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

mothers, especially among the poorer working classes,. 
and the various distracting demands that are made 
upon their attention, even in more favored families. 
Hence this highly important training is now being 
assigned during its last three years to regular schools 
called Kindergartens, or Infant schools, with results- 
which wholly justify the emphasis that Comenius laid 
on the right direction of infant efforts and activities. 
From the age of six to twelve, Comenius proposed 
national schools for all children, girls as well as boys. 
These were to be schools wholly devoted to the 
mother tongue, for which he gives weighty reasons, 
though he would permit some modern language to be 
taught and learned by its use in the later years. He 
doubtless saw that this permission was little likely to 
be used save in the borderlands where two different 
languages were in close proximity. The studies in 
these national schools were to be, reading, writing, 
and reckoning, drawing, measuring, and some handi- 
crafts, — geography, history, Bible history, and sing- 
ing. Comenius proposed that each class should have 
a lesson book containing all that it was to learn in 
these subjects, as well as in morals and religion, — an 
expedient which has not commended itself to the 
experience of succeeding times. The worthy purpose 
which it may have had in view, of avoiding the ex- 
pense of many books, is now attained in German 
elementary schools by the use of inexpensive outlines- 
on which is based a large amount of oral instruction 



SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY REFORMERS. 157 

and practice.* Thus the spirit, though not the form 
of the recommendation of Comenius, has been pre- 
served. 

The intellectual aim proposed for the national 
schools, was to train the senses and the memory, the 
tongue and the hand of all children, that they might 
learn all those things which have to do with the usual 
affairs of life, and which hence would always be use- 
ful for all, whatever might be their future calling. 
The training of the hand in mechanical dexterities he 
desires, not only " that boys may understand the 
affairs of ordinary life," but " that opportunities may 
thus be given to them to find out their special apti- 
tudes." The bearing of this on recent efforts for 
manual training will be obvious, showing Comenius 
as a pioneer in this effort. The school hours for the 
national schools, Comenius would make, two hours in 
the morning for the understanding and the memory, 
and two in the afternoon for the hand and the voice 
and for repetitions, transcriptions, and competitions 
in the various school exercises, an allotment of time 
which has usually been very considerably exceeded 
save in the lowest grades. 

The Latin school or gymnasium which was to re- 
ceive boys of ages from twelve to eighteen, Comenius 
proposed to have established in every province or 
considerable town ; and its aim should be, besides 
moral and religious instruction which are alwa3's to 

* Tor example a set of these outlines now before me (Leitf aden) for the 
grammar instruction during five years of Khe citizen schools, cost all to- 
gether twenty-four cents. 



158 THE HISTORY OF MODEKN EDUCATION. 

be prominent objects, to train the understanding and 
the judgment of those who are destined to some- 
thing higher than commercial and manual pursuits. 

In this, the course is to be encyclopaedic, including 
four languages, viz., the vernacular, Latin, Greek, 
and Hebrew, and besides these, the cycle of sciences 
then known, among which history, " the eye of life,'^ 
was emphasized as to be studied during the entire 
six years in small text-books. 

Comenius does not expect that a complete knowl- 
edge of any subject will be gained in the Latin school, 
but only that " a sure foundation shall be laid in each 
for future acquirements." The same allotment of 
school hours is recommended for the gymnasium as 
for the national school, and a like assignment of the 
more difficult subjects to the morning hours, while 
the afternoons are set apart for history, repetitions, 
and writing. The gymnasium was to be divided into 
six classes, and these were to be so named as to indi- 
cate the order in which subjects should be begun ; 
the 1st to be called grammar, the 2d physics, the 3d 
mathematics — physics to precede mathematics as 
being less abstract — the 4th ethics, the 5tli dialectics 
or logic, and the 6th rhetoric. The reasons for tbi& 
order of arrangement on pedagogic grounds Comenius 
gives in his Magna Didactica. 

For the period from the age of eighteen to that of 
twenty-four, Comenius proposed that there should be 
established an academia, i. e., university in every 
country or large province, to which should be sent 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY EEFORMERS. 159 

only the elite youtli selected for their talent through 
a public examination by the rectors of the schools, and 
in which should be retained only those who approved 
themselves both capable and industrious. The aim 
of the university should be to train the future teach- 
ers, and the leaders of nations in thought and action. 
In it, all sciences should be taught, from which stu- 
dents should select as specialties those for which they 
have the greatest taste ; while at the same time he 
would have systematized summaries prepared, both 
as introductions to the several specialties, and as en- 
abling those who devote themselves to some one 
specialty to gain some idea of its relations to other 
departments of human interest, — a useful purpose if 
properly carried out. He likewise prescribes after- 
noon conferences of professors with students to clear 
up misunderstandings, doubts, or seeming contradic- 
tions ; and he suggests the form of the final examina- 
tions, that " no one may be crowned without victory." 
Finally Comenius suggests that there be somewhere 
a Schola Scholarum for the purpose of original re- 
searches that should advance all sciences, make 
discoveries, and in general "be to the rest of the 
schools what the stomach is to the body, — the living 
workshop, supplying sap, life, and strength." It may 
be said that the German universities as now conducted, 
perform the important functions of both university 
and place of research, as conceived by Comenius ; but 
they leave the weak and indolent students to eliminate 
themselves by the action of examinations. 



160 THE HISTORY OF MODEEN EDUCATION, 

The text-books of Comenius all reveal his pan- 
sophic and utilitarian ideas in their subject-matter, 
since they grasp after useful knowledge, and strive to 
give a taste of all useful things. In the selection, 
gradation, and arrangement of their matter, they are 
intended to exemplify his principles of method. In 
this they are not entirely successful, since, as he later 
confessed, they are too condensed, attempt too much, 
and as we shall presently see, expect of the pupil 
more than can be accomplished ; as, for example, one 
of them has somewhat more than 8,000 Latin words 
which pupils are expected to master. These faults of 
detail he acknowledges to be due to his neglect of 
his own principles. 

These text-books were all intended to aid in the 
mastery of Latin together with the mastery of things 
useful to be known. They make the innovation, how- 
ever, of basing the instruction in Latin on the vernac- 
ular and on things. Comenius regards the Latin 
merely as a means needful to arrive at the knowledge 
of things useful to be known, and not at all as a disci- 
pline of the powers, nor as a preliminary to the clas- 
sic literature, some of which he considered useless, 
and some as unfit matter for the education of Chris- 
tian youth. His text-books were hence intended to 
supersede these useless or pernicious works in school 
instruction, in which object they utterly failed, though 
their extended and long-continued use in the schools, 
indicates that they were found to be a great aid in 
acquiring Latin. These books, named not in the order 



SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY KEFOKMEES. 161 

of their publication, but in that in which they pre- 
pare each for the next, are (1) the Orbis Pictus, (2) 
the Yestibulum, (3) the Janua, and (4) the Atrium : 
in addition to which the author intended to prepare 
a Palace of Authors. Of these the Orbis Pictus and 
the Janua were far the most famous, and of both 
these I have copies before me : the others I have not 
seen, and must rely on others for the brief mention 
that I make of them. 

(1) The Orbis Pictus or World Displayed, is justly 
famous as the first illustrated school-book that was 
ever published, and is the most striking example of 
its author's leading principle, to appeal in all possible 
cases directly to the senses of the pupil. Indeed, in 
the preface to it, he says : " Now there is nothing in 
the understanding which was not before in the sense. 
And therefore to exercise the senses well in rightly 
perceiving the differences of things, will be to lay 
the grounds for all wisdom, and all right discourse, 
and all discreet action in one's course of life. " In 
harmony with this idea, Comenius presents the child 
with a series of 151 pictures, ranging over the entire 
circle of the knowable. The parts of the pictures 
are numbered to correspond with their names as they 
occur in brief descriptions, which are given in both 
Latin and the vernacular placed opposite to each 
other in columns, that the one may be explained by 
the other. All these pictures are quaint, and some 
of them in a high degree curious, for example, the 
attempt to portray the wind in No. 6, the soul in No. 



162 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

43, God's Providence in No. 149, and the Last Judg- 
ment in No. 150. This book, published in 1657, was 
the next year translated into English by Charles 
Hoole, a London schoolmaster, with a preface ad- 
dressed " to all judicious and industrious schoolmas- 
ters ; and it is a reprint of this translation that I have 
now before me. This book went through many edi- 
tions, had an enormous sale, and was long in use. 
It was probably one of the most popular text-books 
ever written. 

(2) The Yestibulum or porch to the Latin tongue, 
contains 1,000 Latin words, embodied in 42Y sentences, 
and divided into seven chapters. The German and 
Latin are given in parallel columns, the German to be 
read first and then its Latin equivalent. Along with 
this reading, is required a progressive mastery of the 
inflected forms from appended tables of declensions 
and conjugations. This Latin primer was expected 
to be studied through several times, and then to be 
committed to memory. The index at the end of the 
book was intended to test the pupils' memory of the 
sentences in which the words occur. With this as a 
preparation, the boy might pass on to the Janua. 

(3) The Janua Aurea Linguarum Reserata, or 
golden door of languages swung open, contains 1,000 
sentences, ranging from those somewhat brief and 
simple at first, to those of considerable length and 
complexity towards the end. These sentences are 
grouped in 100 sections, treating each some phase of 
useful knowledge, the whole field of which they are 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY EEFORMEES. 163 

intended to cover. They contain no fewer than 8,000 
Latin words. The vernacular translation throngh 
whose aid the Latin is to be learned, is in parallel 
columns answering to the Latin, and one copy that I 
have, published in 1676, is adapted for study in either 
German, French, or Italian, two pages opposite each 
other being used as one to accommodate the necessary 
four columns. For each of the languages used there 
is an alphabetical index of words at the end ; but 
there is no lexicon, the intention being that the Latin 
should be learned from its correspondence with the 
mother-tongue ; for Comenius was of the opinion 
that pupils should make their lexicon for themselves 
by comparison of Latin usage with their own. 

It will be needless to more than allude to an edition 
of this famous work published about 1654, to which 
its author prefixed a lexicon in Latin — Latin to be 
first memorized^ followed by a grammar, also in Latin, 
to be mastered before proceding to the Janua itself 
accompanied by no vernacular. I mention it merely 
to show how completely a great reformer of method 
may abandon most of his fundamental principles,, 
when completely possessed with some other idea, like 
that of treating all kinds of useful knowledge of 
things, which was the hobby of Comenius. This edi- 
tion evidently met with little acceptance, for the^ 
quadrilingual edition of 1676, shortly after the death 
of Comenius, is on the original plan of the Janua. 

This book had an enormous success. It was trans- 
lated into twelve European languages, and some of 



164 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

the Oriental ones. The Elzevir edition of 1642, 
which I have, makes Greek take the place of the ver- 
nacular ; and the quadrilingnal edition accounts for 
three of the European tongues. This book, like 
the others that have been described, was intended to 
be perused ten times, with much writing. No one 
need therefore to doubt that Comenius believed in 
repetition as the corner-stone of thoroughness. 

(4) Of the Atrium no more need be said than this, 
that it was a much-expanded Janua, with the same 
number of chapters, but with the sentences expanded 
to paragraphs, thus widening the circle of knowledge 
of the same subjects ; that it contained a Latin gram- 
mar written in Latin, introducing the idioms and 
elegances of the language ; and that it was intended 
to lead up to a Palace of Authors which was never 
prepared. 

As a whole, these treatises are progressive in char- 
acter, in spite of their faults in matters of detail. 
They serve also as an excellent illustration of the 
third of the obstacles to the progress of educational 
reform mentioned in a previous chapter, that, namely, 
which springs from the impossibility that the re- 
former himself should so entirely free himself from 
early prepossessions, as not to permit them somewhat 
^o interfere with his settled principles of later date. 

The Magna Didactica is the great work in which 
Comenius has set forth his principles of education, 
^nd his theoretic application of them to methods of 
instruction and organization. What is needful to our 



SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY REFOEMEES. 165' 

purpose in tliese regards has already been given. It 
remains only to speak of his ideas of discipline. This 
he thought should be wholly mild and kindly, and 
that adherence to his system would render all severity 
needless. For the child, he reasoned, who was not 
forced to study but allured to it, by kind and cheerful 
treatment, by promotions and prizes, by using and 
seeing the utility of all he learns, by an easy and 
orderly procedure from perception of things to ideas 
and words which he remembers because he first under- 
stands them, and by feeling in himself a growth of 
insight and a development of the power to judge 
rightly, — would be little likely to need severe disci- 
pline. In this idea Comenius was doubtless right, as 
the best modern school practice abundantly proves. 

To those who desire a more complete knowledge of 
the life and works of this greatest and most original 
of the Innovators, his life by Prof. Laurie, containing 
an analysis of his works can be confidently recom- 
mended. American educators owe to Mr. C. W., 
Bardeen an excellent reprint of the Orbis Pictus. 
Copies of the Janua are not impossible to be obtained 
through dealers in German books. For those who 
read German, a good translation of the Magna Didac- 
tica is published in Leipsic, and to this is prefixed an 
excellent biography of Comenius and an analytic 
statement of the pedagogical doctrines of the work 
Its German title is "Comenius, Grosse Unterrichts-. . 
lehre." 

In the introduction to this, the editor adduces facts- 



166 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

to prove that this work, published first in Bohemian 
and later in Latin, was little known during the 17th 
century. 

The Port Royalists. 

The teaching community of Port Hoyal, in the 
opinion of French pedagogic writers, exerted a far 
more pervasive and lasting influence on education in 
France than would naturally be expected from the 
smallness of the circle in which it acted, or the brev- 
ity of the time during which its schools continued. 
The little scJiools as they were called, started into 
being in 1613, apparently as a protest against the evil 
moral tendency of the Jesuits ; and they were sup- 
pressed through the machinations of the Jesuits in 
1660, after an existence of barely seventeen years. 
To what then is the continuance of their influence 
to be ascribed ? In part, I think, to the great liter- 
ary activity of some of the lay brothers, who wrote, 
besides some pedagogic treatises, several approved 
text-books, long current under the name of Port 
Royal books; in part also because they were the 
French representatives of some highly important 
principles of the educational reformers, which through 
them and their books became known and influential. 

Thus they numbered among them Nicole who 
wrote a treatise on the education of a prince, in 
which he recommends an appeal to the senses in in- 
.^truction wherever possible, that difficulties be pro- 
portioned to the growing powers of the young, and 
that in the education of the great, chief stress be laid 



SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY EEFORMEES. 167 

on the heart and the morals, rather than on acquired 
knowledge ; Coustel,who wrote a work entitled, "Rules 
of Education for Children ;" Lancelot, who wrote 
the methods of Port Royal for teaching Latin, Greek, 
Italian, and Spanish, and also a catalogue of the root 
words of Greek, with the inviting title " Garden of 
Greek Roots ; " and Arnauld, celebrated for his con- 
troversy with the Jesuits, who aided in writing the 
Elements of Geometry, the Port Royal Logic or art 
of thinking, and a '^ General Grammar," in which the 
universal laws of language are sought in the reason 
common to human beings. These various works of 
the Port Royalists became widely known and es- 
teemed, and perpetuated their influence long after 
their schools were disbanded. 

In the line of reform, one of their great merits was 
the stress which they laid on the vernacular. In that 
age the mother tongues received little attention, as 
we have seen ; yet the Port Royalists made French 
the basis of all instruction. Whereas Latin grammar 
was usually taught in Latin, " the unknown by the 
unintelligible," as Prof. Compayre wittily remarks, 
they prepared in French not only a Latin grammar, 
but likewise grammars for the Greek and some mod- 
ern languages. Pupils were also taught to compose 
in French at an early age on subjects suited to their 
powers, and this work in composition was directed to 
the training oi judgment as well as- to the attainment 
of skill. 

In language study they greatly simplified and 



168 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDTJDATION. 

abridged definitions and rules ; they impressed the 
meaning of rules by their immediate use in the read- 
ing of authors ; they made the most important parts 
prominent by such expedients, not then common, as 
differences of type ; they protested against the abuse 
of written themes^ demanding that the most time be 
given to the explication of authors, of which they 
made rather an exercise of judgment than, like the 
Jesuits, a study of words, making also the translation 
into Latin more an oral than a written exercise, while 
verse making was entirely optional ; instead of giv- 
ing colorless extracts from authors, like the Jesuits, 
they preferred entire works of Latin authors ; and 
they taught Greek to the pupil through the medium 
of his own language instead of through Latin, as was 
usual. Compayre thinks their unquestionable supe- 
riority is as teachers of humanistic studies ; yet hu- 
manities with them were not humanities of mere 
form as with the Jesuits, but of judgment leading to 
a sound use of reason and to an upright conscience. 

Burnier, quoted by Compayre, thus sums up the 
pedagogic principles and merits of Port Royal : " It 
simplified study, without taking from it its whole- 
some difficulties : it strove to make study interesting, 
while not converting it into a puerile play : it caused 
to be committed to memory only that which had first 
been grasped by the intelligence : it admitted only 
perfectly clear and distinct ideas, few precepts and 
many exercises on them, the knowledge of things and 
not merely that of words ; in short, the real develop- 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY REFORMERS. 169 

ment of thought and of the faculties of the soul by 
means of study." So far their ideas and methods 
seem identical with those of the reformers, from 
whom however they differed widely by the light es- 
teem in which they held positive knowledge ; since, 
in the words of Nicole, they valued " the sciences 
only as an instrument to perfect reason." 

Their discipline was mild and kindly considerate, 
but with a tone of gravity in it akin to ascetic gloom. 
They eschewed any resort to praise and emulation as 
tending to arouse pride and self-satisfaction. Their 
motto " to speak little, endure much, and to pray still 
more," shows how entirely they relied on the aid of 
God and on the prayers addressed to Him for the suc- 
cess of their work. They had " a deep distrust of 
human nature," which was shown by the check which 
they put on the formation of friendships among the 
boys. " Pious practices they held in honor, yet they 
subordinated them to the reality of inward sentiment; 
hence they advised devotion, but did not impose it." 
'* Above all they manifested the profound and un- 
wearying devotion of Christian souls who give them- 
selves wholly and without reserve to other souls to 
elevate them, but injured and marred by a shade of 
rigidity and mysticism." 

Such was this small and short-lived, yet largely in- 
fluential teaching congregation ; exemplifying in their 
own way and coloring with their own spirit, some of 
the most far-reaching principles of the educational 
reformers ; and uttering a courageous protest, in a 



170 THE HISTOKY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

gainsaying age, against the spirit, the methods, and 
the tendencies of the Jesuits, their crafty co-religion- 
ists. Suspected, coerced, and finally silenced, their 
methods and the best features of their spirit survived 
them, and in the next age took the form of the wise 
Kollin ; and their protest against the Jesuitic spirit 
in education, through the letters of Pascal, gathered 
force ultimately to overthrov^ temporarily those by 
whom they had been overthrown. 

John Milton, 1608-1674, 

We have seen in the 16th century, how weighty 
contributions to pedagogical literature we owe to 
English teachers like Ascham and Mulcaster. In the 
17th century England can point with pride, not merely 
to the powerful though indirect influence on educa- 
tion of Sir Francis Bacon, but also to noteworthy 
thoughts on education from her greatest poet, and 
from one of her most renowned philosophers, Milton 
and Locke. 

John Milton, best known for the past two centuries 
as a great poet, was chiefly distinguished in his own 
time for the vastness, variety, and elegance of his 
scholarship, for his vigor and ferocity in politico-theo- 
logical controversy, and for the austerity of his repub- 
lican principles. He is of interest to us here only as 
a skilful and successful schoolmaster, and as the 
author of a brief but significant treatise on education. 
The story of his life belongs to literary history, and 
has been told by Dr. Johnson in his " Lives of the 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY EEFORMEKS. 171 

Poets," with that bitterness of personal prejudice 
from which that remarkable man could never wholly 
abstain when occasion offered, and for which, to this 
stanch royalist and high churchman, the career of 
Milton presented abundant opportunity. Hence John- 
son cannot refrain from " some degree of merriment " 
on the poet's career as a master of a boys' boarding 
school, which however, with an air of magnanimity, 
he conceded that " no wise man will consider as in 
itself disgraceful ;" yet he contrasts satirically his 
ardor in hastening home from his travels when he 
heard that England was on the verge of a civil war, 
with the peaceful and humble employment in which 
he at once engaged. It is not wholly impossible that 
the poet who penned in one of his sonnets the noble 

line, 

" He also serves who only stands and waits," 

may have seen that the most effective way in which 
he could serve his native land in her trouble was by 
aiding to train her youth for a better destiny. 

Johnson writes, " It is said that in the art of educa- 
tion he performed wonders, and a formidable list is 
given of the authors, Greek and Latin, that were read 
in his school by youth between ten and fifteen or six- 
teen ; " but he expresses his incredulity in these words : 
*' Those who tell or receive these stories should con- 
sider that nobody can be taught faster than he can 
learn. The speed of the horseman is limited by the 
power of the horse. Every man that has ever under- 
taken to instruct others, can tell what slow advances 



1Y2 THE HISTOKY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

he has been able to make, and how much patience it 
requires to recall vagrant inattention, to stimulate 
sluggish indifference, and to rectify absurd misappre- 
hension." The worthy doctor here speaks doubtless 
from a bitter recollection of his own unhappy experi- 
ence as a schoolmaster. 

It was during the years that he devoted to teaching" 
and at the age of thirty-six that he wrote the little 
essay on education with which this sketch has to deaL 
At a later period of his life, after he had held consid- 
erable public employments, and while engaged in 
writing Paradise Lost, he showed his passion for his 
former vocation, by writing an elementary Latin 
method, descending, as Johnson pompously says, "from 
his elevation to rescue children from the perplexities 
of grammatical confusion, and the trouble of lessons 
unnecessarily repeated." 

In his tractate on education which is in the form of 
a letter to Samuel Hartlib, a learned Polish-Prussian 
merchant then residing in England, and a friend of 
Comenius, the great poet declares that he has thought 
much and long on a reform of education as a matter 
of quite vital moment. In his view, the aim of edu- 
cation is "to regain to know God aright." "But 
because our understanding cannot, in this body, found 
itself but upon sensible things, nor arrive so clearly ta 
the knowledge of God and things invisible, as by 
orderly conning on the visible and inferior creature^ 
the same method is necessarily to be followed in all 
discreet teaching." 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY REFORMERS. 173 

This sentence condenses in itself a whole chapter 
of pedagogic psychology ; and both in this and the 
entire spirit of his treatise, Milton shows himself in 
entire accord with the fundamental ideas of Montaigne 
and Comenius, alluding indeed to the Didactica, and 
the Janua as books with which he is acquainted. 
Like them he emphasizes the need of basing the work 
of education on knowledge of sensible things, and in- 
sists upon exact and orderly observation of external 
things as " the method necessarily to be followed in 
all discreet teaching." Like them, he lays great stress 
on experience and on immediate application of what 
has been learned. His ideas, too, like theirs, as to 
the subject-matter of education, are what many in 
these days are apt to stigmatize as utilitarian, as 
though things useful to be known, should on that ac- 
count be regarded with suspicion as pabulum for the 
youthful intelligence. He differs widely from them 
in some points ; and wherein they differ, his scheme 
is doubtless less practicable than that of Comenius ; 
or, as he says himself, '^ I believe that this is not a 
bow for every man to shoot in that counts himself a 
teacher, but will require sinews almost equal to those 
which Homer gave Ulysses." Yet all these illustri- 
ous men, amid their differences in plans for accom- 
plishing their common objects, have still the same 
great objects in view, viz., so to reform education as 
to restore sense-activity and experience to their proper 
and fundamental place in instruction, to cultivate the 
understanding more while cramming memory less, 



1Y4 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. * 

and to confine the subjects of instruction closely to 
those matters which will best fit the future man to 
perform well his duties as a citizen and a Christian. 
Milton's definition of education is justly famous for 
its force and elegance of expression : "I call there- 
fore a complete and generous education, that which 
fits a man to perform justly, skilfully, and magnani- 
mously all the oflSces, both private and public, of 
peace and war." As a prelude to this, he arraigns 
" the usual method of teaching arts as an old error of 
the universities, not yet well recovered from the 
scholastic grossness of barbarous ages, that instead of 
beginning with arts most easy, — and those be such 
as are most obvious to the sense, — they present their 
young novices at first coming with the most intellec- 
tive abstractions of logic and metaphysics," so that 
''for the most part they grow into hatred and con- 
tempt of learning." 

To this perverted teaching, Milton attributes the 
fact that when young men so bred enter on life, some 
betake themselves " to an ambitious and mercenary 
or ignorantly zealous divinity;" some are "allured 
to the trade of law " with no higher aim than "fat 
contentions and flowing fees ; " others engage in " state 
affairs with souls so unprincipled in virtue and true 
generous breeding, that flattery and court shifts, and 
tyrannous aphorisms appear to them the highest 
points of wisdom ; " and still others are content to lead 
a life of mere luxury and sensuous enjoyment. The 
scheme of education, then, that he would arrange 



SEVENTEENTH CENTUEY KEFOKMEES. 175 

was intended to rescue youth from careers so mean 
and inglorious, and to put them upon the attainment 
of the lofty ends that he proposes in his definition, 
by a way laborious indeed, yet withal so alluring that 
he believes there would be more difficulty in driving 
from it the dullest and most indolent, " than we now 
have to hale and drag our choicest and hopefullest 
wits to that asinine feast of sow thistles and brambles 
which is commonly set before them." 

Milton concedes the necessity of learning languages, 
because the knowledge and experience of individual 
nations is incomplete, yet he insists that " language is 
but the instrument conveying to us things useful to 
be known." Hence he blames the schools for wasting 
seven or eight years " in scraping together so much 
miserable Latin and Greek as might be learned easily 
and delightfully in one year." This loss of time he 
attributes partly to too frequent vacations, but mostly 
to a " preposterous exaction, forcing the empty wits 
of children to compose verses, themes, and orations 
which are the acts of ripest judgment and the final 
work of a head filled by long reading and observing 
with elegant maxims and copious invention." The 
practice which he denounces as preposterous has, 
however, proved very tenacious of life, continuing 
far into the present century, and being by no means 
extinct in the native land of Milton. Having there- 
fore no opinion of the value of the ancient languages 
as a mental gymnastic, he would have them learned 
by the most compendious means possible, with only 



176 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

the most essential parts of grammar thoroughly prac- 
tised in some good short book, that they might quickly 
be used as a medium through which " to learn the 
substance of good things and arts in due order." 

Between the ages of twelve and twenty-one, Milton 
expects boys to master all good authors in Latin and 
Greek, together with Hebrew for purposes of scrip- 
ture study, whereto he thinks, " it would be no im- 
possibility to add the Chaldee and the Syrian dialect," 
with the Italian, as he naively adds, at any odd hours. 
This however is only language as a means of convey- 
ing to the hoys things useful to be known. Through 
these his boys are to master " the rules of arithmetic, 
and soon after the elements of geometry even playing 
as the old manner was," likewise geography and as- 
tronomy, the easy grounds of religion and scripture 
history, agriculture from classical authors, "that they 
may improve the tillage of their country," natural 
history from the same sources, trigonometry with its 
applications in engineering and navigation, the ele- 
ments of medicine, the essentials of rhetoric, logic, 
ethics, and poetry, and also politics that they may 
"know the beginning, end, and reasons of political 
societies." 

After this the boy is to dive into the grounds of 
law from Moses and Lycurgus and Justinian " down to 
the Saxon and common laws of England and the stat- 
utes." " These," he says, " are the studies wherein 
our noble and our gentle youth ought to bestow their 
time in a disciplinary way from twelve to one and 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY REFOKMERS. 177 

twenty," — at convenient times for memory's sake re- 
viewing and systematizing all, " until they have con- 
firmed and solidly united the whole body of their 
perfected knowledge like the last embattling of a 
Roman legion." The relationship of this scheme of 
studies with the pansophic ideas of Comenius, is 
somewhat striking. 

We may well pause here to inquire with Milton, 
'' what exercises and recreations may best agree with 
and become these studies ;" for young fellows fed on 
so full and sturdy an intellectual diet would be quite 
sure to need exercise. For an hour and a half before 
their noontide meal, the recreations are to be of a 
martial character, a training in the use of all kinds of 
weapons and in wrestling, " as need may be often in 
fight to tug or grapple and to close." Then whilst 
resting before meat, their spirits are to be composed 
by '^ the solemn and divine harmonies of music," to 
which, like Plato and Aristotle, he ascribes '' a great 
power over dispositions and manners." Then again 
about two hours before supper, the boys are to be 
summoned to warlike evolutions, first on foot, then 
as age permits on horseback, and finally in " all the 
helps of ancient and modern stratagems, tactics, and 
warlike maxims." 

He expects from this that boys will go from his 
school fitted to command armies with more than usual 
credit, as the result of those physical exercises by 
which their bodies are enabled to endure the hercu- 
lean labors which his required studies impose. Besides 



178 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

these regular exercises in tlie school, he provides for 
the older boys another recreation, in which, ever 
thrifty in the use of time, he proposes to combine 
long excursions on horseback in the spring with a pleas- 
ant mode of gaining knowledge of their own country 
and its resources, by " observing all places of strength, 
all commodities of building and of soil for towns and 
tillage, harbors and ports of trade," and with these, 
some idea of naval affairs, " of sailing and of sea 
fights." 

Finally when his admirable Crichton shall have 
gained all knowledge, wisdom, and virtue, as well 
from observation and experience as from converse 
through books with all that has been worthily said or 
done by great men in ages past, Milton permits him 
at the age of three or four and twenty to see other 
countries, "not to learn principles, but to enlarge 
experience, and make wise observations." It will be 
seen therefore that while Milton agrees with Mon- 
taigne in thinking foreign travel beneficial, he differs 
from him both as to its time, and the purpose that it 
should subserve. Montaigne would have the boy visit 
foreign lands while young and with a judicious tutor, 
that he may learn their languages by use, become 
acquainted with their manners and modes of life that 
he may be thus guarded against narrow and provincial 
ideas and modes of judging, and learn their history on 
the spot, with what he values more, the ability to 
judge of histories. 

As to the methods by which Milton hopes to achieve 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY REFORMEES. 179 

the large results that he expects, it will already have 
been seen that they contemplate a thorough use of the 
senses, a guiding of the youth in all possible cases to 
personal experience and to immediate application in 
right ways of what he has learned, and the combina- 
tion of all that has been learned, by a right use of the 
understanding, into such a systematized body of doe- 
trine as may justly be termed wisdom. 

For the motive power that shall prompt boys to 
undertake and continue such labors, he looks chiefly 
to the example of teachers, which " might in a short 
space gain them to an incredible diligence and cour- 
age, infusing into their young breasts an ingenuous 
and noble ardor." He expects much also from " such 
lectures and explanations upon every opportunity as 
may lead and draw them in willing obedience, in- 
flamed with a study of learning and the admiration of 
virtue, so stirred up with high hopes of living to be 
brave men and worthy patriots, dear to God and fa- 
mous to all ages, that they may despise and scorn all 
their childish and ill-taught qualities to delight in 
manly and liberal exercises." 

'Now as regards the motives on which Milton relies,, 
love of knowledge, and a high-toned ambition to 
excel, though they are of the most enduring influence 
when once thoroughly roused, it may be doubted by 
some teachers whether they are not directed to ends 
somewhat too remote to be influential with the ordi- 
nary run of boys in a considerable school. Doubtless, 
by good precepts, effectively expressed, given on aptly 



180 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

-chosen occasions, not weakened bv too frequent repe- 
tition, and best of all, enforced and illustrated by the 
consistent example of respected teachers, such high 
motives may be awakened and kept active in the more 
finely endowed boys, prompting them *' to scorn de- 
lights and live laborious days ; " and thus a powerful 
public sentiment may be fostered in a school which 
will stir even the coarser and ruder natures. Hence 
if Milton's ideas in this regard bear the same heroic 
stamp as his scheme of studies, they are none the less 
worthy of the most attentive consideration of all con- 
scientious teachers who are intent to educate as well 
as to instruct, and to educate by instructing. 

It remains only to be said that Milton's so compre- 
hensive and useful scheme of studies, proposed for so 
lofty aims, and inspired by such high motives, was in- 
tended to be carried out in schools, each for one 
hundred and thirty boys, who were to be lodged in 
fair houses enclosed in spacious grounds ; and that it 
was meant to supersede both the English public 
schools and the universities for whose "asinine feast 
of sow thistles and brambles " he expresses so hearty 
a contempt. 

In the great lines on which he would carry out the 
reforms which he thinks needful in the schools, he is 
obviously in full sympathy with the leading principles 
of the educational Reformers ; whilst by the demands 
that he makes on the personality of the teacher both 
^s example and as guide in the strenuous exertion of 
■every power, he dignifies his calling to a degree which 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY KEFOEMEES. 181 

has come to be generally admitted only in much- 
more recent times. 

John Locke, 1632-1704. 

John Locke, long celebrated as a philosopher, has- 
an especial claim on the attention of the student of 
education, because of the wide influence he has ex- 
erted on educational history through his " Thoughts 
Concerning Education," and, in a much smaller de- 
gree, by his essay on Studies. Curiously enough, his 
ideas have been much less influential among his own 
countrymen than on the continent of Europe. Until 
a comparatively recent period, the typical English 
schoolmaster has shown little interest in educational 
theories and problems, so that Locke's ideas on educa- 
tion were long better known in France and Germany 
than in England. In France, especially, he inspired 
Rousseau with nearly every valuable thought which 
appears in the brilliant pages of his Emile. He seems 
himself to have derived some of his most character- 
istic ideas from Montaigne and possibly also from 
Rabelais, as will be apparent in the analytic examina- 
tion of his chief educational work. 

He brought to his task a pedagogic experience^ 
gained, not like that of Milton in the management of 
a considerable number of boys, nor like that of Come- 
nius in the organization and direction of schools and 
in the preparation of manuals for youth, but in the 
direction of the education of a few high-born boys, 
and in wise and friendly counsels given to people of 



182 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

"distinction who sought his advice in the training of 
their sons. Possibly from this circumstance he, like 
Montaigne, favors private education and consequently 
neglects that of the people, believing, to use his own 
words, that " that most to be taken care of is the gen- 
tleman's calling ; for if those of that rank are by their 
education once set right, they will quickly bring all 
the rest into order." It need hardly be shown how 
inferior is this conception of the sphere of education 
to that of Luther and Comenius, both of whom be- 
lieved that to all youth should be given an education 
befitting their destiny as human beings, instead of 
leaving their improvement to the chance of influences 
that might be vouchsafed to them from above. 

Moreover the wise foresight of these men in contra- 
distinction to the narrower views of Locke, is being 
continually emphasized by all the movements of mod- 
ern civilization. 

Still Locke's preference for private and individual 
education was entirely in harmony with his belief in 
the decisive effects of early training in shaping the 
character and destiny of men. At tlie beginning of 
his " Thoughts," he says, " Of all the men we meet 
with, nine parts of ten are what they are, good or 
evil, useful or not, by their education. 'Tis that 
which makes the great difference in mankind. The 
little or almost insensible impressions on our tender 
infancies have very important and lasting conse- 
quences ; and there 'tis as in the fountains of some 
rivers, where a gentle application of the hand turns 



SEVENTEENTH CENTUKY EEFOEMEES. 183 

the flexible waters in channels that make them take 
quite contrary courses, and by this direction given 
them at first in the source, they receive different ten- 
dencies, and arrive at last at very remote and distant 
places." Kow no one can fairly question the great 
and far-reaching effects on the character of the child 
due to his early experiences ; and if one fully believed 
that so large a part as nine-tenths of what men are is 
due to these early experiences, and so little as one- 
tenth to innate or inherited dispositions and tenden- 
cies, and believed besides, as Locke apparently assumes, 
that these influential experiences can be satisfactorily 
controlled by a private education, the argument for 
such education would be very strong. 

Yet its strength is rather apparent than real ; for, 
setting aside the important fact that such separate 
education would be attainable only by those who are 
favored by fortune, and who can find paragons for 
tutors, the general experience of mankind has shown 
that native tendencies play a much larger part in shap- 
ing men's characters than Locke admits in the passage 
that has been quoted. Indeed, in § ^^ of the same 
work, he forgets consistency, and refutes his earlier 
over-statement, by saying '' God has stamped certain 
characters on men's minds which like their shapes 
may perhaps be a little mended, but can hardly be 
totally altered and transformed into the contrary. — 
For in many cases all that we can do or should aim 
at, is to make the best of what nature has given, to 
prevent the vices and faults to which such a constitur 



184 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

tion is most inclined, and give it all the advantages 
it is capable of." 

Bat besides this stubborn fact of innate dispositions, 
which causes the best education to expend unavail- 
inglj a portion of its force, we should not lose sight 
of another fact quite as stubborn, which is that not 
even the wisest man can wholly control or even fore- 
see the experiences that may be decisive in shaping 
the infinitely variable tendencies of the young. The 
acute Rousseau saw this difficulty, and to avoid it he 
proposed to isolate his Emile from all human com- 
panionship save that of his tutor ; but whilst he would 
strive thus to eliminate the dangers that spring from 
the strong social instincts of human beings, — one of 
the most influential factors in shaping character, — he 
ignores the fact that man can be fitted for his proper 
sphere of activity in human society, only by early and 
habitual intercourse with his fellows. From this in- 
tercourse, it is true that he runs a risk of being led 
astray : without it, it is well-nigh sure that he will be 
less than a normal man. Hence, despite the weighty 
opinion of Locke, we may feel reasonably sure that 
our usual mode of educating youth in the society of 
their fellows, notwithstanding its seeming risks, is not 
merely the only practicable one, but is also to be pre- 
ferred on theoretical grounds to a private education ; 
even could paragons be always found for tutors. 

Montaigne, it will be remembered, lays great stress 
on the choice of a tutor whom he would wish to be a 
man " with a strong and well-balanced head rather 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY EEFORMEES. 185 

than with a very full one," furnished with good man- 
ners and a sound understanding rather than with 
mere book knowledge. Locke emphasizes the char- 
acter and qualifications of the tutor even more strongly 
than Montaigne had done. Indeed, after his some- 
what discursive fashion, he recurs to this subject 
again and again, and in the most various connections ; 
so that to make out the qualities which his ideal tutor 
must possess, we are obliged to refer often to quite 
widely-separated sections of his work. 

Of his character, he says, " I think this province 
requires great sobriety, temperance, tenderness, dili- 
gence, and discretion, qualities hardly to be found 
united in persons that are to be had for ordinary sal- 
aries, nor easily to be found anywhere. Then too he 
must be thoroughly well-bred, for " to form a young 
gentleman, as he should, it is fit his governor should 
himself be well-bred, understand the ways of cai-riage 
and measures of civility in all the variety of persons, 
times, and places, and keep his pupil, as much as his 
age requires, constantly to the observation of them." 
"Besides being well-bred, the tutor should know the 
ways of the world well ; the ways, the humors, the 
follies, the cheats, the faults of the age he is fallen 
into, and particularly of the country he lives in," that 
he may be able to teach his pupil to steer his course 
prudently and safely through the devious paths of a 
deceitful and self-seeking world. 

In his instruction, "his great skill is to get and 
keep the attention of his scholar, making him com- 



186 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

prehend the usefulness of what he teaches and the 
added power he thus gets, and making the child sen- 
sible that he loves him and desires his good." Finally 
he " should be one who thinks Latin and language 
the least part of education ; one who, knowing how 
much virtue and a well-tempered soul is to be pre- 
ferred to any sort of learning or language, makes it 
his chief business to form the mind of his scholar 
and give that a right disposition ; " and who, to that 
end, " should have something more in him than Latin, 
more than even a knowledge in the liberal sciences ; 
he should be a person of eminent virtue and pru- 
dence, and with good sense, have good humor and the 
skill to carry himself with gravity, ease, and kindness 
in a constant conversation with his pupil." 

From this description of the tutor which has been 
pieced together from passages scattered here and 
there as his mode of treatment called for them, it 
may be seen that Locke has a lofty ideal of the 
teacher and of his work. He is to be gifted with the 
finest of human qualities, and in their combination, 
the rarest ; these are to be adorned by perfect good- 
breeding, and their usefulness enhanced by a consum- 
mate knowledge of the world and of men ; with a 
sufficient literary and scientific knowledge, he must 
combine a clear conception of the aims towards which 
:all his educational efforts should steadily tend ; and 
with all these gifts and acquirements, he must above 
all be endowed with that rare tact and power of in- 
fluence which alone can make all these effective. It 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY REFORMEES. 187 

may be said without reservation that the teacher of 
any age or country may safely make Locke's ideal 
tutor his model. 

Bred a physician, and afflicted during his entire 
life by feeble health, of which however he took such 
prudent care as to reach the age of seventy-two, Locke 
was naturally led to treat with more than usual ful- 
ness of the early physical training and care of chil- 
dren, insomuch that some writers on education 
•consider it the chief merit of the " Thoughts " that so 
great stress is laid on physical education. Still we 
may without loss give this portion of his work a some- 
what cursory attention, especially as the author has 
given an admirable condensation of his views, as 
follows : "What concerns the body and health, re- 
duces itself to these few and easily observable rules : 
plenty of open air, exercise, and sleep, plain diet, no 
wine or strong drink, and very little or no physic, 
not too warm and straight clothing, especially the 
head and feet kept cold, and the feet often used to 
cold water and exposed to wet." Of these rules, 
probably none would now be objected to save the one 
to keep the feet cold and exposed to wet, and the 
method by which Locke would secure it, by having 
children wear thin and leaky shoes. 

His remarks on diet are excellent; yet it seems 
strange to modern ideas, that while admitting most 
ripe fruits into his dietary, he should class peaches 
and grapes with melons and most plums, as articles to 
be rigidly excluded. His moderate and sensible ad- 



188 THE HISTOKY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

vice to avoid all medicine, and physicians as well^ 
save in cases of imminent necessity, seems to have- 
given to Rousseau the hint on which, in two passages 
of his Eraile, he writes a violent and whimsical tirade 
against physicians and their art, a tirade which it i& 
said he had later the grace to regret, but not to correct. 

Coming now to what in the narrower sense we con- 
sider education, Locke § 134 states its purposes, and 
what in his view should be their relative rank, as- 
1st, virtue ; 2d, wisdom ; 3d, good-breeding, and 4th 
and last, learning. 

By virtue, he means not only religion with its at- 
tendant truthfulness, founded on " a true notion of 
God," which in his view, " ought very early to be 
imprinted on the child's mind," but also self-control, 
self-denial to which the child is to be early habitu- 
ated ; and in general, " a well-tempered soul which is 
to be preferred to any sort of learning." 

Wisdom he defines § 140, as a blending of pru- 
dence, foresight, knowledge of the world, and ability 
in affairs, with an aversion to mere cunning. To lead 
a child to wisdom, he believes we must begin by mak- 
ing him averse to trickiness as in itself shallow and 
contemptible, and leading soon to distrust and con- 
tempt. When this is duly impressed, he thinks that 
" to accustom a child to have true notions of things- 
and not to be satisfied till he has them, to raise his 
mind to great and worthy thoughts, and to keep him 
at a distance from falsehood, and cunning, which has 
always a broad mixture of falsehood in it, is the fittest. 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY REFORMERS. 189 

preparation of a child for wisdom." The rest which 
•can come only from time, experience, and observa- 
tion, can be aided only by accustoming youth " to 
truth and sincerity, to a submission to reason, and as 
much as may be to reflection on their own actions." 

In this moral training of the young, as in all other 
parts of their education, Locke strenuously objects to 
frequent resorts to the rod as usually *' a passionate 
tyranny over them — putting their bodies in pain 
without doing their minds any good." In place of 
blows and passionate chidings, and even of finely 
phrased precepts oft repeated, he would rely, like 
Aristotle, on good example and early habituation. 
" Pray remember," he says, " children are not to be 
taught (conduct) by rules which will be always slip- 
ping out of their memories. What you think necessary 
for them to do, settle in them by an indispensable 
practice as often as the occasion returns, and if it be 
possible, make occasions. This will beget habits in 
them, which being once established, operate of them- 
selves easily and naturally without the assistance of 
memory." He sees also that to secure this moral 
habituation so essential to true wisdom, the child 
must from the outset be accustomed to implicit obedi- 
ence to rightful authority. Of this he says, § 36, 
*' He that is not used to submit his will to the reason 
of others when he is young will scarce hearken or 
submit to his own reason when he is of an age to 
make use of it ; and what kind of a man such a one 
is likely to prove is easy to foresee." 



190 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

On good breeding, Locke treats at considerable 
length, commenting wisely and wittily on the most 
common modes in which it is violated, and empha- 
sizing the necessity of securing it by a combination of 
good example and early and constant habituation, 
with an inbred regard for the rights and feelings of 
others. His golden rule for good breeding is, " not 
to think meanly of ourselves, and not to think meanly 
of others." 

Locke anticipates the surprise likely to be caused 
by his placing learning last in a treatise on educa- 
tion, and by his insisting that it is the least part. He 
justifies it in this way. " I imagine you would think 
him a very foolish fellow that should not value a 
virtuous or a wise man infinitely before a great 
scholar. Kot but that I think learning a great help 
to both in well-disposed minds ; but yet it must be 
confessed also that in others not so disposed, it helps 
them only to be the more foolish or worse men. — 
Learning must be had, but in the second place, as sub- 
servient only to greater qualities." His order of 
estimation is therefore first character with that which 
may add effectiveness to character, and afterwards 
knowledge, — an order which in too many cases tends 
to be reversed in modern practice. 

He strikes the key note of the subjects that ha 
would have taught to youth in a paragraph which oc- 
curs in his discussion of the recreations in which the 
young should be encouraged to engage. "In all the 
parts of education, most time and application is to be 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY REFORMERS. 191 

bestowed on that which is like to be of greatest con- 
sequence and f requentest use in the ordinary course 
and occurrences of that life the young man is destined 
for." With this principle all parts of his scheme of 
studies agree. Thus he lays great stress on careful 
instruction in one's native tongue. Grammar should 
be learned " amongst the other aids of speaking well," 
but it should be the grammar of the youth's vernacu- 
lar, and its study should be limited to those only who 
would take pains in cultivating their style. Rhetoric 
he holds in low esteem as of little use for the purpose 
for which it is taught, which purpose he thinks may 
be better attained by exercise on familiar topics ac- 
cording to good models; and in § 189 he proposes a 
scheme for teaching composition which smacks 
strongly of Quintilian. Of logic as the art of reason- 
ing rightly, he thinks even more lightly than of rhet- 
oric". " Truth," he says, " is to be found and supported 
by a mature and due consideration of things them- 
selves, and not by artificial turns and ways of argu- 
ing." 

Latin he regards as absolutely necessary for a 
gentleman ; but he would have this or any other need- 
ful language taught by the briefest possible way, and 
wherever practicable, by speaking it, which is, he 
says, " the true and genuine way," an idea in which 
he agrees with Montaigne. Where this mode is im- 
practicable, he would have Latin taught by interlinear 
translations of easy authors, followed by easy books 
with English translations. Thus Locke appears to be 



192 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

the responsible siiggester of the modern practice called 
Bohning^ as also of the once famous " Hamiltonian 
system " of learning languages. 

In the early stages of language instruction he thinks 
grammar needs no attention save what is necessary to 
master the inflected forms. If grammar is taught at 
all, it should be to one that can use the language al- 
ready. " How else can he be taught the grammar of 
it," cries Locke triumphantly. . Like Milton, he con- 
demns the writing of Latin themes and Latin verses, 
the latter however for a quite different reason from 
any that Milton would have urged : he discourages 
poetry as well as versification in any language, be- 
cause, as he pithily expresses it, "Pafnassusis a pleas- 
ant air but a barren soil." 

Of other studies, he would have geography on the 
globes early begun, and also arithmetic by daily prac- 
tice in reckoning, to be followed by astronomy 
according to the Copernican system. He would have 
chronology go hand in hand with geography that the 
two may introduce to history " which is the great 
mistress of prudence and civil knowledge, — and is the 
proper study of a gentleman or man of business." 
Law and the constitutional history of one's own coun- 
try, he agrees with Milton in deeming indispensable ; 
and the enlightened men of all countries seem to be 
coming to a modified form of this opinion. Geom- 
etry should be taught as far as the first six books of 
Euclid ; and some good short history of the Bible 
should precede physics as an antidote to materialisin. 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY REFORMERS. 193 

Of natural philosophy, however, he says, " I think 
I have reason to say we never shall be able to make a 
science of it. The works of nature are contrived by 
a wisdom and operate by ways too far surpassing our 
faculties to discover or capacities to conceive, for us 
ever to be able to reduce them to a science " § 190. 
Now at the close of the second century since this 
opinion was recorded by the most sagacious and in- 
structed philosopher of his age, this once impossible 
science leads all others in the importance and brill- 
iancy of its revelations ; and, not content with ran- 
sacking the mysteries of the earth, with no irreverent 
hand, it assails the heavens, makes the lightning its 
useful servant, and careers on the wings of light to 
the remotest confines of the universe itself. 

Finally Locke follows Comenius and Sir Wm. 
Petty * in advocacy of the training of the hand, by 
impressing at considerable length the importance that 
every man should learn some trade, and even giving 
a list of those trades that he would have taught, an- 
ticipating in this a number of those that are proposed 
in our own days. In this we shall see that Rousseau 
copies him, and urges the idea with so much eloquence 
that the learning of some trade becomes fashionable 
in France ; and even the king, the unhappy Louis 
XYL, becomes a skilful locksmith. 

It is now easy to see that, both in the subjects 
chosen for instruction, and in the spirit with which 

* See Barnard's American Journal of Education Vol. XL, p. 199, for Sir 
Wm. Petty's plan of an industrial school, containing nearly all valuable 
ideas of modern advocates of manual training. This plan dates from 1647. 



194: THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

thej are presented, Locke is a pronounced utilitarian. 
Even Latin, now urged most largely for disciplinary 
ends, was in his day still indispensable to a gentleman 
as a means of gaining much useful knowledge, and 
in this view he urges it. Both this, and the methods 
he recommends rank him with the most thorough- 
going reformers. Thus he rejects all instruction that 
appeals merely to memory. He insists abundantly 
on reaching the understanding and reason of the child, 
and on assuring the knowledge of things before 
words. He advises to begin always with what is first 
and easiest, with what is most obvious to the senses, 
and to advance by easy and natural steps towards what 
we would ultimately unfold, making all that is taught 
familiar and habitual by practice, and aiming always 
to develop the abilities which the boy has at his stage 
of progress. 

All this clearly implies that Locke presupposes on 
the part of the teacher a definite and far-reaching 
aim^ and that he believes teaching is something far 
higher than the presentation of a mere memorized 
jumble of interesting facts. A few brief quotations 
will give his more important ideas in his own words. 
§ 180, " In this as in all other parts of instruction, 
great care must be taken with children to begin with 
that which is plain and simple, and to teach them as 
little as can be at once, and settle that well in their 
heads before you proceed to the next or anything new 
in that science. Give them first one simple idea, and 
see they take it right, and perfectly comprehend it. 



SEVENTEENTH CENTURY EEFORMEES. 195- 

before you go any further ; and then add some other 
simple idea which lies next in your way to what you 
aim at ; and so, proceeding by gentle and insensible 
steps, children will have their understandings opened, 
and their thoughts extended farther than could have- 
been expected." § 195, " In history the order of time 
should govern, in philosophic inquiries that of nature^ 
which in all progression is to go from the place one is- 
then in to that which joins and lies next to it ; and so< 
it is in the mind, from the knowledge it stands pos- 
sessed of already to that which lies next and is coher- 
ent to it, and so on to what it aims at by the simplest 
and most uncompounded parts it can divide the matter 
into." The principles of naturalness in order, and 
clearness and progression in instruction could not well 
be stated more succinctly than in these passages from 
Locke. 

No one has recognized more sharply than he the 
necessity for success in instruction, of holding the 
mind free from the agitation of any passion and es- 
pecially of fear. " Is is as impossible," he says, " to- 
draw fair and regular characters on a trembling mind 
as on a shaking paper." Like most of the Reformers, 
he cherishes the idea of teaching all things in a kind 
of play, an idea which it is easy to recognize as a re- 
volt against the dull and joyless routine that had long 
passed for instruction, and which conceives as play 
the pleasurable activity of youth whose powers are 
enlisted in some study that they are brought to love. 

This review of Locke cannot be closed more appro- 



U96 THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

priately than by a quotation from himself, which 
happily sums up his aim. " The great work of a 
governor is to fashion the carriage and form the 
mind ; to settle in his pupil good habits, and the prin- 
ciples of virtue and wisdom ; to give him by little and 
little a view of mankind, and work him into a love 
and imitation of what is excellent and praiseworthy ; 
and, in the prosecution of it, to give him vigor and 
industry. The studies which he sets him upon, are 
but as it were, the exercises of his faculties and em- 
ployment of his time, to keep him from sauntering 
and idleness, to teach him application, and accustom 
him to take pains, and to give him some little taste of 
what his own industry must perfect." The last sen- 
tence certainly lacks little of being a purely disci- 
plinary view of the office of studies. 

It may on the whole be doubted, whether, with all 
-our modern advances in education, we have yet 
reached the full application of the valuable pedagogic 
^principles set forth by Locke. 



CHAPTER YIIL 

FEMALE EDUCATION AND FENELON. 

During the entire middle ages, the education of 
women had been confined to those of the higher or 
wealthier classes, and had followed closely the course 
indicated by the advice given by St. Jerome to Laeta 
in the 4th century, — advice which since his day has 
ever been influential with Catholic parents in matters 
of female education. * St. Jerome had advised his 
friend to care for her daughter's early education her- 
self, making it mostly religious, and then to send her 
in her girlhood to a convent. " Let her," he says, ^' be 
brought up in the convent in the company of virgins. 
Let her learn never to swear, to think falsehood a 
sacrilege, be ignorant of the world, live the life of an 
angel, be in the flesh but not of it, and believe every 
human being to be of the like nature with herself." 
In accordance with this counsel of St. Jerome, the 
education of mediaeval maidens was wholly monastic, 
and predominantly religious. They were taught 
prayers and portions of the Scriptures, to be reverent 
to God, obedient to parents, and submissive to their 
husbands, if so be that they should marry. Certain 
feminine graces and accomplishments befitting their 
station in life had careful attention. They were also 

* See Barnard's Amer. Jour, of Edn., Vol. V., p. 594 for St. Jerome's ad- 
vice. 

(197) 



198 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

taught feminine handiwork like fine sewing and em- 
broidery, and, more frequently than men of the same 
rank, they were able to read and write. 

During the 17th century, female education in gen- 
eral retained the same monastic character, but the 
abiIity][to read and write had become general among 
the girls trained in convents. Their reading was, 
however, almost entirely confined to books of devo- 
tion ; and, they were as far as possible kept in igno- 
rance of the real world until they were ushered into 
it by marriage. The too f requentl}^ disappointing re- 
sults of this conventual training were apparent. The 
noise of the great world of living, striving, sinning 
men and women penetrated even the walls of con- 
Tents, and the vivid imaginations of the young recluses 
transformed its empty babblement into voices of 
pleasures, more alluring because unknown and forbid- 
den, which summoned them to enjoyment. Into this 
world, painted in the delusive colors of fancy, they 
ventured on their release, ignorant of its wiles and 
delusions, eager rather for unwonted enjoyments than 
for a sober round of duties, and too often little re- 
strained by religious scruples which hung but loosely 
upon them and which they were ready to discard 
with their conventual garments. 

What wonder then that these inexperienced feet 
sometimes went sadly astray, that the expectations of 
parents and friends came to nought, and that young 
girls who were thought to be trained for pious wives 
and discreet heads of families, became, in too many 



FEMALE EDUCATION AND FENELON. 199 

cases, the most frivolous and light-minded of triflers, 
without depth of principle to preserve them even 
from vice ! What better could be expected from 
empty souls, ushered without experience into glitter- 
ing scenes, and possessed within themselves of no 
intellectual resources, — than that they should feed on 
delusions and fill themselves with vanities and fancy 
these to be life ! The need of a deeper culture for 
girls had, therefore, in this age become apparent to 
many, — a culture which should store an otherwise 
unoccupied mind with intellectual treasures, in con- 
trast with which all that the world has to offer should 
appear in its true light and in its just proportions, — 
its vices stripped of their glitter, and its duties, its 
virtues, and its rightful enjoyments revealed as alone 
desirable. 

Thus we have seen that Comenius would offer to 
girls up to the age of twelve the same education as to 
boys, and it is obvious how great an extension this 
would be for girls. Yet after the age of twelve, all 
his thought is fixed on the higher training of boys, 
leaving to girls no school encouragement for the 
higher development of their awakening powers. In- 
deed it has been left to the present century and to 
our own country to throw open all the avenues of the 
higher learning to women, and sometimes in the same 
institutions with young men, leaving it to experience 
to determine whether there really is that sex differ- 
ence in intellectual gifts and aptitudes which has so 
usually been assumed. This is surely a bold advance 



200 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

in the Americanization of learning, but one whose re- 
sults have thus far justified its boldness. 

With the Port Royalists who, as we have seen, 
made so great and beneficial changes in the education 
of boys, the training of girls was conceived wholly on 
a monastic ideal, strict and ascetic in character, di- 
rected rather to the moral and religious nature than to 
the intellectual, and adapted rather to fit its subjects 
for future blessedness than for present usefulness in 
the duties which life imposes. The great object with 
the sisters of Port Poyal was to make sure that their 
pupils should be good from principle, and there was 
this excellent difference from most convents, that the 
girls were neither required nor encouraged to pray or 
to attend services save the mass, unless they sincerely 
desired to do so. Thus they discouraged and made 
needless a mere formal or hypocritical performance of 
religious duties ; but for the needs of the intellect no 
larger provision was made than in other convents. 
To be able to read and write, to read good books of 
piety, to learn a little arithmetic on feast days, to 
gain skill in feminine handicrafts, — this was the sum 
of the provision for intellectual education at the Port 
Royal school for girls. 

For a brief period towards the close of this century 
Mme. de Maintenon, so well known at the court of 
Louis Xiy., in the conventual school for the daugh- 
ters of impoverished nobles which she founded at St. 
Cyr, seems to have meditated a more generous cul- 
ture for girls. She allowed them access to some of 



FEMALE EDUCATION AND FENELON. 201 

the best stores of French literature. They even en- 
acted plays like Racine's Esther with great spirit and 
eclat. But she seems to have shrunk in terror from 
the revelation which their acting gave her, of the 
spirit, the vivacity, the capabilities of intellect and 
affection which lay hidden in these young girls. The 
plays were given up. The studies were limited to 
reading, writing, a little arithmetic for accounts, and 
a slight knowledge of French history. The reading 
of the girls was confined to pious books, but even 
much reading was held in suspicion. Says Mme. de 
Maintenon '' Reading does more harm than good to 
young girls. — Books make people witty, and arouse 
an insatiable curiosity." 

Instead of books she would have girls learn domes- 
tic economy, the duties of household and family, and 
especially all kinds of household work. In all these 
the girls were practised, and in them their directress 
saw a moral safeguard. "Labor," she says, "calms 
the passions, occupies the mind, and does not leave it 
time to think of evil things." This is good in its way, 
but it is an effort to fill an intentional intellectual 
void with the labor of the hands, to send forth to the 
responsibilities of the family life for which they 
were trained, busy hands coupled with an empty 
mind. What then might happen when the hands 
need no longer be busy ! 

To us of the 19th century it appears that Mme. de 
Maintenon's original project of giving to girls occu- 
pations for heads as well as hands, was abandoned 



202 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

merely because it promised to be successful, and that 
had these young maidens shown less talent the causa 
of female education might have been substantially 
promoted by their kind patroness. In justice to her,, 
however, we should remember the prejudice against 
learned women which has been very slow in dy- 
ing out, and which then had but recently givea 
point to some of Moliere's comedies. Her latent pur- 
pose was to prepare her girls for the marriage market 
of that day, and to make of them women with active 
brains and well-stored minds might have defeated her 
object. 

Mme. de Sevigne is so widely known through her 
elegant letters, that it is needful only to allude to her 
as a woman of the 17th century, who, though she 
wrote nothing directly on education, was yet pos- 
sessed of rare intellectual accomplishments without in 
the least incurring the odium of being a "precieuse," 
and whose letters show her to have been an ardent 
friend to a large culture for girls. 

The most influential advocate in that age of a 
higher type of education for women, was doubtless 
Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray : but as the larger 
part of his excellent treatise " De I'Education des 
Filles," is applicable equally to both sexes, and as its 
pedagogic ideas and methods are of great interest we 
will limit ourselves in this connection to what he pro- 
poses especially for girls, returning later to his general 
views on educational matters. Besides the treatise 
that has been alluded to, we have a letter to a friend 



FEMALE EDUCATION AND FENELON. 203 

of his, a ladj of rank, on the training of her only 
daughter, which is replete with good sense elegantly 
expressed. Leaving aside the consideration of stud- 
ies, it deals with such matters as the inculcation of a 
taste for quiet elegance in dress, compassion for the 
poor and unfortunate, the unobtrusive possession of 
rich stores of solid knowledge, and most emphati- 
cally of all, deep religious principle nourished by 
quiet meditation. 

In this letter, while approving of convents as the 
best places for the training of the majority of girls, 
because of the ignorant carelessness or the frivolity of 
mothers, or because of their preoccupation with many 
domestic cares, he does not hesitate to prefer home 
training where it can be made such as it should be, 
nor does he fail to point out the risks and disadvan- 
tages of conventual education. He says "The world 
never dazzles so much as when one sees it from afar, 
without ever having seen it near at hand, or having 
been fortified against its seductions. Hence I should 
fear a worldly convent still more than the world it- 
self. — A girl who has been separated from the world 
only by being ignorant of it, and in whom virtue has 
not yet struck deep roots, is easily tempted to think 
that what is most wonderful has been hidden from 
her. She emerges from the convent like one who has 
been brought up in the gloom of a deep cavern, and 
who is suddenly exposed to the full light of day. 
^N^othing is more dazzling than this unprepared-for 
passage, this glamour to which one has never been 



204 THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

accustomed. It is much better that a girl be grad- 
ually accustomed to the world by the side of a pious 
and discreet mother." From these guarded expres- 
sions of the pious archbishop, it is easy to infer that 
his opinion of a conventual education for girls is less 
favorable than that of St. Jerome, and that he consid- 
ers it only as an alternative against pressing dangers 
at home. 

Of the special education of women, he says in his 
treatise, " The education of women like that of men 
should tend to prepare them for their duties." The 
highest and most imperative of these duties, he be- 
lieves is to educate their children aright, and he indi- 
cates clearly the wisdom, the prudence, the piety, the 
gentle firmness, and the knowledge of human nature 
that are essential for this high office. Next to this, 
the girl should be trained in those things which will 
fit her to rule successfully her small kingdom, the 
household, in which he emphasizes these points : 
A wise economy, as remote on the one hand from 
avarice and sordidness as from extravagance and os- 
tentation on the other, and in order that they may 
attain this, girls should be given the care of some- 
thing, should learn the values of commodities, and 
should be taught to keep accounts with accuracy: 
Girls should be trained to neatness and order, which 
however Fenelon would have carefully guarded 
against degenerating into a narrow fastidiousness or a 
petty and annoying f ussiness : They should learn 
how to care for and manage servants, and in regard to 



FEMALE EDUCATION AND FENELON. 205 

this his advice is full of a kind of wisdom such as we 
should hardly look for in a man and an ecclesiastic : 
Finally he recommends that girls should be reared 
with a careful regard to their probable future station 
in life, and with ideas suited to this as respects dress, 
duties, and pleasures. 

The intellectual culture which Fenelon proposes 
for girls is very far in advance of his age, and pre- 
sents an ideal for general female education which 
would do no discredit to any period. He would have 
girls taught to read and write well ; and, while calling 
attention to the badness of much that passes for read- 
ing, he explains that what he means by good reading 
is the ability to read fluently and intelligently, natu- 
rally and so as to give pleasure to heai-ers. They 
should have a practical knowledge of the grammar of 
their own language, and should be so well versed in 
the simple rules of arithmetic as to be able to use 
them accurately in accounts and in the ordinary 
business of life. To this he would add a knowledge 
of the ordinary business forms and of those elemen- 
tary ideas of law and justice which women are likely 
to need as well as men in many of the exigencies of 
life. 

He recommends moreover the reading of carefully 
chosen profane authors, works of poetry and elo- 
quence, and the history of France and Greece and 
Kome. For sacred history, he advises that there 
should early be given orally a series of brief and vivid 
narrations chronologically arranged, and presenting 



206 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

the noblest and most inspiring incidents and char- 
acters of the Bible story. These he would have 
presented at intervals, not as tasks to be memorized, 
but rather as rewards for good conduct. The topics 
for such a series of narrations are given in the sixth 
chapter of his treatise, and they are especially worthy 
of note because they are probably the first suggestion 
of a method of teaching history from vitalized centers 
which is now attracting a good deal of attention. 
If girls are to learn any language save their own, he 
prefers that it should be Latin, "the language of the 
church," rather than Italian or Spanish. 

Furthermore he recommends that girls be taught 
music and painting, but with careful avoidance in 
music of everything that would unduly excite the 
passions, and " make innocent pleasures seem too 
tame." Finally they should be taught to use their 
hands deftly in all the usual kinds of tasteful femi- 
nine work. 

Obviously we have here a very generous scheme of 
general female culture, one which not merely busies 
the hands, but which is capable of filling both mind 
and heart so full of worthy and noble objects that 
there would be small leisure for vague fancies and 
vicious desires. 

Mme. de Lambert, the foremost disciple of Fenelon, 
courageously claims for her sex the right to a suitable 
education, in which she would add to the scheme of 
Fenelon a little of philosophy, especially the Cartes- 
ian, to give precision to the girl's thoughts and to 



FEMALE EDUCATION AND FENELON. 207 

•enable her to talk sensibly. She enters a vigorous 
protest against including learning in the same ridi- 
cule with pedantry, by which doubtless some women 
were frightened away from the pursuit of learning ; 
and she declares that because women have been ex- 
•cluded from things of the spirit and from the literary 
-culture of letters, they have been forced to fall back 
on mere pleasures. 

Such then are the ideas which some of the best 
minds of the 17th century have advanced in behalf 
of a better education for women. They show clearly 
that the principles of the Renaissance are extend- 
ing themselves to that which is but too apt to be 
overlooked by men, — the need of a progressive in- 
tellectual elevation of the female sex. The credit of 
initiating this movement belongs almost solely to 
France ; for Germany took no other part in it than the 
proposal of the exiled Moravian bishop Comenius. 

Fenelon. 

It has already been remarked that besides what 
Fenelon did to promote the better education of 
women, his merits both as a highly original and in- 
genious teacher and as the author of pedagogic works 
prepared to furtlier his views as to how instruction 
should be given, are important facts in the educa- 
tional history of the 17th century. 

He was born of a distinguished family in 1651. 
He completed his college studies at the age of twenty, 
and then at his own earnest desire he was educated 



208 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

for the priesthood of which his entire life made him 
in all respects a brilliant ornament. His gentle piety 
and his success in his parochial duties caused him to 
be made, at an early age, director of an institution for 
reclaiming Protestant women to Catholicism, and it 
was during the ten years that he held this place that 
he wrote his treatise " De I'Education des Filles,'^ 
a work which deserves all the influence it has exerted 
by the soundness of its views, and by the pedagogic 
ingenuity of its suggestions. 

In 1689, in the flower of his manhood, he was ap- 
pointed tutor to the young Duke of Burgundy, 
grandson and presumptive heir of Louis XIY. The 
duke was an intelligent but headstrong child, of a 
violent, fierce, and ungovernable temper, and with an 
overweening sense of his own importance; but yet 
possessed withal of latent possibilities which were of 
the greatest promise. In taming this young human 
tiger and reducing him to order, in developing his 
dormant powers, and in inculcating in him those prin- 
ciples which should fit him for the high destiny which 
seemingly awaited him, Fenelon displayed all that 
prudence, tact, and delicac^^ of touch which he sets 
forth so admirably in his treatise. He especially ex- 
emplified his favorite idea of indirect instructioriy 
which he sets forth in the 5th chapter of the treatise^ 
in the admirable series of Fables and Dialogues, soon 
to be described, which he composed for the moral in- 
struction of his charge. His extraordinary success 
with his seemingly intractable pupil caused him to- 



FEMALE EDUCATION AND FENELON. 209 

be named Archbishop of Cambray, in which diocese 
for nearly a score of years he displayed the virtues of 
the primitive apostles, in the simplicity of his life 
and in his services to the poor and wretched who were 
exposed to the horrors of war. He ended his noble 
and pious life in 1715 at the age of sixty-four. 

On account of the nearly absolute character of the 
French monarchy, and the consequent enormous in- 
fluence which their princes exerted both on the des^ 
tinies of the state and on the entire tone and fabric 
of society, the utmost importance was attributed 
during the 17th century to the training of the future 
kings and princes of France. Hence some of the 
greatest and most learned men of the age, not only 
eagerly accepted the office of tutors to them, but also^ 
wrote text-books for their instruction, and sometimes^ 
treatises on the methods that they employed. Hence 
in France, the pedagogy of the 17th century has a 
prevailing character of something intended for 
princes, though the views that are expressed are usu-^ 
ally equally applicable to all children. 

Thus the famous Bossuet and other men hardly less 
distinguished were tutors of the Dauphin, the stupid 
and obstinate son of Louis XIY; and to penetrate 
his dull brain, Bossuet caused to be prepared the 
long-esteemed Delphine edition of the classics, be- 
sides writing himself a treatise of logic, a "Discourse 
on Universal History," and some other books. Thus- 
Fenelon prepared for the Duke of Burgundy all his 
pedagogic works save his treatise on the education of: 



210 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

girls and the advice to a lady which has previously 
been referred to. That they contributed to his suc- 
cess with a pupil seemingly so unpromising, gives 
them an additional claim on our attention as the 
means used in an interesting pedagogical experiment. 
These works are the Fables, the Dialogues of the 
Dead, and the Adventures of Telemachus, which last 
was once largely used in the schools of this country 
as a French reading book. 

Of the Fables there are thirty-six, many of which 
are of considerable length. They are all very lively 
and interesting in tone, and all embody moral lessons 
skilfully adapted to a child of such character and such 
future destinies as the young prince for whom they 
were composed. A good example of this is the pretty 
story of E-osimond and Braminte and the magic ring 
which a fairy presented to them in turn, — showing 
the good and the bad uses to which unlimited power 
may be turned, and its fatal results, when employed 
for selfish or malevolent ends. 

Several of them were evidently intended to suggest 
to the quick-witted young prince the correction of the 
glaring faults to which he was prone, in that indirect 
or suggestive mode of instruction which Fenelon so 
greatly favored. Such, for example, are the fable of 
the Bee and the Fly, conveying a lesson on unreason- 
able anger ; and that of the youthful Bacchus and the 
Faun, in w^iich the Faun is represented as laughing 
at the blunders of Bacchus in practising the language 
of the gods, to whom the young god " said with a 



FEMALE EDUCATION AND FENELON. 211 

haughty and impatient tone, ^ How darest thou laugh 
at the son of Jove !' ' Ah,' replied the Faun without 
emotion, 'How dare the son of Jupiter make any 
mistake ! '" To one who bears in mind the violent 
and haughty temper of the spoiled child with whom 
Fenelon had to deal, the application of fables like 
these is obvious. 

The Dialogues of the Dead form a series of seventy- 
nine conversations imagined to be carried on in the 
realm of shades by various historic or mythic person- 
ages, ranging from Hercules and the Trojan heroes to 
kings and statesmen not long dead. They evidently 
had a double purpose, viz., to give to his royal pupil 
a keener interest in historic study by familiarizing 
him with famous men who did much to shape the 
destinies of their times, whilst at the same time incul- 
cating wholesome ideas of many things which should 
fit the future king of France to reign justly and 
wisely. 

The first purpose was analogous to the plan pro- 
posed by Fenelon for teaching sacred liistory by a 
series of interesting Bible stories chronologically ar- 
ranged. Dr. Thomas Arnold, in an essay on classical 
teaching, in 1834 suggested a similar scheme for 
teaching history by a series of striking pictures and 
biographic narrations, arranged chronologicall}^ to 
serve as nuclei for future accretions ; and twenty 
years later Drs. Spiess and Yerlet embodied the idea 
in three concentric courses of historic and biographic 
narrations for German secondary schools, each course 



212 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

reviewing and widening the course of the preceding 
one. These works have already passed through 
many editions. Thus this idea of FeneJon has begun 
to bear fruit in the last half of the 19th century. 

It is to be regretted from an educational point of 
view, that the death of the Duke of Burgundy before 
that of his grandfather, has taken from us any proof 
of the success or failure of Fenelon in his second pur- 
pose, that of training a wise, just, and virtuous king 
for France ; but the character which the young man 
is said to have exhibited during his brief career, so 
far as the roseate accounts of princes can be trusted, 
was such as to rouse the highest expectations among 
those who knew him. 

Besides the Fables and Dialogues, Fenelon com- 
posed for his pupil a number of short pieces, partly 
in French and partly in Latin ; and when he had 
grown to manhood, his old tutor gave him a final 
proof of the affectionate interest in which he was 
held by writing for his guidance the " Adventures of 
Telemachus," in which the son of Ulysses is repre- 
sented as traversing various regions in a search for 
his father, and learning in his journeyings the art of 
governing justly under the tutorship of the goddess 
Minerva who has concealed herself under the guise of 
the wise old man Mentor. This work, which was 
published without the knowledge of its author, at- 
tracted to him the lively hostility of Louis XIY., who 
considered it a criticism upon his policy of govern- 
ment, and who prohibited all intercourse of his 
grandson with his former tutor. 



FEMALE EDUCATION AND FENELON. 213 

In all this Fenelon has shown us vividly how se- 
rious is the task of him who undertakes the duty of 
preparing the young for their future career, and how 
great is the foresight and how indefatigable the pains 
that should be exercised in acquitting one's self of 
this task. The means that he used for the accom- 
plishment of his purpose will repay a careful study by 
all educators. 

Let us now return to the treatise on the Education 
of Girls, for a brief survey of Fenelon's ideas on 
general education. What chiefly impresses one in 
this treatise is the fineness and delicacy of touch 
which he thinks should be displayed in the manage- 
ment of youth, and the great emphasis which he lays 
upon careful moral training, the thorough develop- 
ment of estimable character. 

The refinement of his method which appears in all 
his suggestions, and which Professor Compayre seems 
inclined to stigmatize as cajolery, is shown perhaps 
most obviously in his favorite mode of conveying in- 
struction indirectly or by suggestion, which he uses, 
not only to captivate attention by a striking example 
aptly introduced, but for the higher purpose of elicit- 
ing independent mental activity on the part of the 
pupil in the application of the truth that has been 
covertly presented. The Fables and Dialogues are 
good illustrations of this suggestive method, which it 
need hardly be said is eminently objective in its char- 
acter. 

His delicate discrimination is farther exemplified in 



214 THE HI8T0KY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

the care that he recommends in studying the innate 
differences of temperament and inclination in chil- 
dren. In this he strikingly contrasts the difference 
of treatment required by those gifted with lively sen- 
sibilities or weighted by dull ones, and unwittingly 
lays down the lines on which a few years later he so 
happily trained a prince of quick understanding, but 
violent, headstrong, and haughty in no ordinary de- 
gree. 

In moral education, like most educators, he lays 
great stress on early impressions as deeply influencing 
the entire future of children. It is strange that 
though this is so well known there is so little practical 
realization of it by parents and teachers. Fenelon 
would especially have the children of more favored 
parents guarded from an inordinate idea of their own 
importance, by guarding them from the servility of 
inferiors, by letting them see that the care that is be- 
stowed on them is due less to their merit than to their 
feebleness, and by showing them that they are not 
perfect since they improve from year to year. 

Like Locke, Fenelon calls earnest attention to the 
need of eradicating tendencies to craft and cunning, 
which when deeply rooted, he thinks constitute the 
most hopeless type of character ; and he adds to this 
what he thinks of nearly equal moment, false-shame, 
which leads to secretiveness and dissimulation : chil- 
dren should be early taught to be prudent and 
discreet without being deceitful. " The highest pru- 
dence," he says, ^' consists in saying little, in distrust- 



FEMALE EDUCATION AND FENELON. 215' 

ing ourselves much more tlian others, but not in 
dissembling speeches. Uprightness of conduct, and 
the general reputation of probity bring to us more 
confidence and esteem, and consequently more advan- 
tages even of a worldly kind, than deceitful ways." 

Moral lessons like others should be inculcated by 
examples and suitable narrations rather than by bald 
precepts. Thus he would choose for this instruction 
such events from the Bible " as, by affording pleasing 
and magnificent images, would render religion and 
morality beautiful and sublime." He deprecates the 
too common practice of making dress or delicacies for 
the palate, rewards for well-doing, because of the 
moral effects of such rewards in giving the child a 
false standard of value^ leading him to esteem low 
things more than high ones. He would rather bestow 
judicious praise, or give as rewards such simple and 
innocent recreations as appeal rather to the aesthetic 
and intellectual sentiments than to vanity and sensu-^ 
ality. In this connection he weightily says, " Of all 
the faculties of the child, reason is the only one on 
which we can depend. If carefully trained it always 
grows with his growth." In this, as in other pai-ts of 
moral education, he is in full accord with his cotem- 
porary Locke whose '' Thoughts on Education " ap- 
peared at nearly the same time. 

The most salient ideas of Fenelon on intellectual 
education may be briefly summarized. 1. He strongly 
advises the direction of the child's instincts rather 
than their repression, especially the instinct of curios- 



216 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

itj which should be guided into proper channels that 
it may become a source of knowledge instead of ex- 
pending itself dangerously. Hence he is at one with 
the Innovators in care for observation. 2. He cau- 
tions against overcrowding children, while recognizing 
their characteristic lack of control over attention ; 
nor would he have them contract a habit of accepting 
statements without due reason. 3. He counsels great 
judgment and discretion in the selection of matters to 
be taught to the young. " Into a reservoir so little 
and so precious only exquisite things should be 
poured," he beautifully says. 

He not only everywhere advocates, but also shows 
how to practise, making learning pleasurable to youth 
and using ingenious expedients to secure on their part 
a delighted mental activity. Hence he strongly rep- 
robates the evil practice of setting lessons as punish- 
ments, as tending directly to connect unpleasant 
associations with what he would always have presented 
as a delight. Finally, not only in these principles, 
but also in the care that he recommends for health, 
^or letting children see and feel the use for the activ- 
ities of life of all that they learn, for the exercise of 
authority mildly and without caprice, for cultivating 
judgment and reason by their use as fast as they de- 
velop, and for teaching all things, Latin included, 
through the vernacular and using thereto pretty and 
nvell-illustrated text-books, — Fenelon shows himself 
in harmony with educational reformers like Comenius. 



CHAPTER IX. 

ORATORY OF JESUS, AND BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN 
EDUCATION. 

It might be questioned whether the origin of the 
important teaching congregation, the Oratory of 
Jesus, is an educational fact of such prominence as to 
be made one of the characteristics of the 17th century ; 
but wlien we reflect upon the influence it has had in 
promoting and re-shaping secondary education in 
France, a most important member among civilized 
states, we are likely to find a sufficient reason for giv- 
ing it this prominence. 

This religious community was introduced in France 
about 1614 by Pierre de Berulle who later became a 
cardinal. One of its leading functions was to teach.- 
Intended at first for the education of candidates for 
the priesthood, its services soon extended far beyond 
these limits and included the secondary education of 
all classes. Although never by any means an aggres- 
sive body, it seems evidently to have been considered 
by the Jesuits a quiet protest against their organi- 
zation, their methods, their spirit, and their tenden- 
cies. Hence they pursued it with unremitting hostil- 
ity, in spite of which however it so prospered that in 
fifteen years after its foundation it had charge of more 
than fifty houses or colleges, and grew rapidly in 
influence thereafter. 

(217) 



218 THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

It did in truth come into a silent antagonism with 
the Jesuits, in its form of organization, its principles, 
and its subjects of study, together with the spirit in 
which study was pursued. 

Its organization was purely Galilean : its superior 
resided in France, and was responsible solely to the 
archbishops and to the general council of the order : 
its members were bound by no vows save the usual 
vows of the priesthood, and hence were free to quit 
the Oratory at pleasure : and the obedience of the 
brothers was a purely voluntary submission to supe- 
riors whom they themselves elected. Hence a degree 
of liberty and spontaneity was enjoyed by its mem- 
bers of which the Jesuits never dreamed. 

Its principles were, — to render a cheerful obedience 
to officials and laws that they liad themselves or- 
dained : not to interfere with political matters, or, as 
one of them says, ''our politics is to have no politics, 
and nothing is more foreign to our spirit than to es- 
tablish and strengthen our order by human means :" 
to leave to individual members a large degree of 
personal liberty in intellectual matters : and, in in- 
struction, to combine a taste for profane letters wdth 
a love for historic facts and scientific truths, — all of 
which was in strong contrast with the practice of the 
Jesuits. 

In the nature and range of studies pursued, the Ora- 
torians differed not less widely from the Jesuits than 
in organization and principles. The Jesuits made 
•obligatory the use of Latin in communication : the 



OKATORY OF JESUS. 219 

Oratorians promoted a thorough study of the mother 
tongue and taught all subjects in it up to the fourth 
year of school, after which Latin was required save in 
history which was always taught in French. Tlie 
Jesuits made large use of Latin themes and verses : 
the fathers of the Oratory laid quite as much stress 
on explanation of texts, on oral work, and on imita- 
tion of what had been explained. The study of the 
Jesuits was almost exclusively literary on \X\q formal 
side, other subjects being mere accessories to this : 
the Oratory combined instruction in the spirit of lit- 
erature with a generous measure of mathematics, 
physics, philosophy, and history; this last subject, 
indeed, was strongly emphasized and extended through 
all their classes, beginning with sacred history and 
ending with the history of France. 

They united tlie study of geography with that of 
history, and enlivened it by the use of mural charts. 
A similar expedient to enliven the study of Latin 
grammar was also devised by one of the Oratorians, 
in the form of five charts of different colors, one for 
genders and declensions, a second for conjugations, a 
third for preterites and supines, and the other two 
for syntax and quantity. In Greek it was counted 
sufficient to be able to read it understandingly without 
writing it; and that comparative study of languages, 
which at Port Eoyal gave birth to Arnauld's General 
Grammar, was not undertaken by the Oratory. Fi- 
nally, it may be said that in philosophy they followed 
Plato and Descartes rather than Aristotle and the 



220 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

schoolmen. In all tins it may be seen that their ten- 
dency was not only away from the Jesuits, but towardsr 
the principles of the educational reformers. 

Their discipline, while mild and winning like that 
of the Jesuits, yet avoided the spiritual subjugation,, 
the espionage, and the spirit of equivocation which 
were so freely charged against their rivals. 

The Oratorians produced also authors like Bernard 
Lamy, and Thomassin, in whose works we find em- 
bodied the principles and practice of the organization 
mingled with ideas peculiar to themselves. The 
former in his " Conversations on the Sciences," treats 
of studies in general, and of letters more than sciences. 
His idea of education is that it consists of three parts^ 
acquisition of knowledge, justice of judgment, and 
rectitude of conduct ; the first of which he conceives 
to be chiefly valuable for the second, and both these 
that they may lead to the third. The resemblance of 
this to Locke's idea is sufficiently striking. 

Lamy like Fleury would have study begin with a 
good Logic, a curious perversion of the educational 
process, which would undertake to teach how to 
reason correctly before taking care to develop the 
power to reason at all, or providing materials for the 
exercise of reason. To the theory of logic he de- 
mands that practice in mathematics and especially in 
geometry be added. " There is," he says, " no study 
fitter to exercise the judgment than geometry and 
other parts of mathematics." In this combination of 
the doctrine of logic with its practice, Lamy follows 
in the track of Kamus. 



OEATOEY OF JESUS. 221 

In language he believes in beginning with versions, 
recommends a scheme having some similarity to that 
of Comenius, and suggests interlinear translations. 
He decries Latin versification, and proposes as the 
order in which Latin authors shall be studied, Ter- 
ence, Csesar, Sallust, Cicero, Yirgil, and Horace. I 
am inclined to think we may find in a sentence of 
Lamy the hint of one of the fundamental ideas of 
Rousseau ; " we are the work of God," says Lamy ; 
^' we have therefore no reason to think we are bad." 

The key note to Thomassin is to be found in his 
idea that " there is hardly one of the classic authors 
of Greece and Rome who does not illustrate some ob- 
scurities in Holy Writ." Hence much that he wrote 
is a plea for the study of classic authors from a Chris- 
tian stand-point, not only on account of the pure 
morality of many of them, but because he believed 
that at bottom their fables are mere distortions of 
Christian doctrines, derived from natural religion or 
from traditions communicated by travellers. More- 
over he fancied that Hebrew was the original lan- 
guage, and that Greek and Latin were mere off-shoots 
therefrom ; and from the combination of these ideas, 
he was led to emphasize the importance of the study 
of etymologies leading to comparative philology. 

The materials from which this sketch of an influ- 
ential teaching congregation has been condensed, have 
been mainly derived from Prof. Compayre's " Criti- 
<5al History of the Doctrines of Education in France." 



222 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

What has been named as the last of the character- 
istic facts in the educational history of the lYtb 
century is one which has a special interest for Amer- 
icans : it is that with the beginnings of permanent 
colonization in this country, we have also the begin- 
nings of efforts for education, efforts too which in at 
least one case look towards free, general, and even 
compulsory education. Of these beginnings we must 
here content ourselves with a mere brief sketch that 
it may take its proper chronological place in the series- 
of important educational facts. 

The early colonists of North America seem in all 
cases to have realized the need of education for their 
children, and to have made creditable efforts to pro- 
vide for it, the form which these efforts assumed 
differing in different colonies. In the colonies south 
of New York, provision for education was with few 
exceptions made by private schools or by parental 
teaching of the elements of learning. Not a few of 
the wealthier families sent their sons to England for 
their training. Yet early efforts were made in Yir- 
ginia with the aid of friends in the mother country 
for the establishment of both schools and a college in 
that colony ; but the project failed by reason of Indian 
wars, and the money that had been raised was lost. 

To Yirginia however belongs the credit of founding 
the second college on this continent, the college of 
William and Mary. This institution was chartered 
in 1693, and received large endowments in money and 
lands, besides the proceeds of a tax on tobacco, and 



BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN EDUCATION. 223 

the fees for the survey of the public lands which was 
placed under its charge. Many of the leading patriots- 
of Virginia received their education within its walls ;^^ 
but it has in recent years fallen into a neglect and de- 
cay that is greatly to be deplored in the case of an 
institution so venerable. 

The documents of the Colonial History of JSTew 
York contain numerous evidences of the care of the 
early Dutch settlers for the maintenance of clergy 
and schoolmasters. The duty of patroons and citizens 
in this regard is emphasized ; taxes are decreed ; com- 
plaints are made of the misdirection of funds intended 
for schools ; the salaries and fees of schoolmasters are 
defined ; the secretary of the Dutch West India 
Company stirs to emulation by pointing to the efforts 
of the New England colonies ; and the names of sev- 
eral of the early Dutch teachers, beginning in 1633 
with Adam Koelenstan, are preserved in these docu- 
ments or in those so industriously collected by Dr. 
Pratt, late Assistant Secretary of the JSTew York 
board of Regents of the University. 

After New York fell into the hands of the English, 
the chief care that seems to have been given to schools 
during the 17th century was to assure that whatever 
instruction was given should be in the English 
tongue. All teachers were required to be licensed by 
the Archbishop of Canterbury — later by the Bishop 
of London — or by the royal governor ; and some fu- 
tile efforts were made to suppress the Dutch schools, 
which seem to have sprung up in nearly every Dutch 
hamlet. 



224: THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

Much the most significant of the early educational 
efforts, however, were those made in New England, 
first in Massachusetts, but followed very soon by Con- 
necticut. The Boston Latin school was founded in 

1635, the next year after the settlement of the town 
was begun, and claims to be the oldest existing school 
in the United States, — a claim however which is dis- 
puted in favor of the school of the Eeformed Dutch 
Church in New York which was opened in 1633. In 

1636, what has now become famous as Harvard Uni- 
versity was founded, receiving its name from John 
Harvard, its chief early benefactor, and having for its 
foremost object the training of a learned clergy. 

The early years of this now wealthy institution, 
like those of most American colleges, were years of a 
struggle with poverty. Its studies were marked by 
some of the same characters which we have seen in 
European schools, — a master}^ of the Latin being re- 
quired for entrance, then Greek, Hebrew and two 
other Oriental tongues, logic and ethics including pol- 
itics, arithmetic and geometrj^, the Bible and divinity, 
a little history and less science, — such was earlj^ Har- 
vard. 

But even more interesting than this early provision 
for the higher learning, was the wise interest that was 
shown to provide instruction for all the children in 
the elements of learning. Thus in 1642 we find the 
General Court of Massachusetts "taking into serious 
consideration the great neglect of many parents and 
masters in training up their children in learning and 



BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN EDUCATION. 225 

labor," ordering that this evil shall be remedied by 
the officers of the towns, and empowering them to 
punish neglect by fines or even "to put forth as ap- 
prentices the children of such as they shall find not 
Able and fit to employ and bring them up." 

Five years later, the General Court passed the law 
which is usually counted as the beginning of the 
American common school system. " It being one 
chiefe project of yt ould deluder Sathan, to keep 
men from the knowledge of ye Scripture, as in former 
times by keeping yem in an unknown tongue, so in 
this latter times by persuading from ye use of tongues, 
yt so at least ye true sence and meaning of ye origi- 
nal might be clouded by false glosses of saint-seeming 
deceivers,— yt learning may not be buried in ye grave 
of oE fathrs in ye church and commonwealth, the 
Lord assisting o£ endeavors. It is therefore ordered " 
1st, that when any town has increased to fifty fam- 
ilies it shall establish a school to teach all youth to 
read and write, the teacher to be paid either by par- 
ents and masters or by tax as the majority of the 
town officers may decide ; 2d, that towns of a hun- 
dred families shall establish a grammar school in 
which boys may be prepared for the university ; and 
3d, that a fine of 5£ be imposed on towns that shall 
fail for more than a year to obey this order. 

As the towns grew richer during the century, this 
fine for neglect was doubled and then quadrupled. 
Thus we have in these old laws the outlines of a sys- 
tem of schools, and stringent provisions for enforcing 



226 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

obedience to them by communities as well as individ- 
uals. Laws of kindred tenor and with sanctions akin 
to those contained in these two acts, were in less than 
ten years passed also by both the colonies that now 
form the state of Connecticut. In many New En- 
gland towns also portions of the public lands were 
set apart for school purposes, and Massachusetts early 
set the example of appropriating one sixty-third of 
her public lands to create a fund for the support of 
schools. 

Such were the remarkable efforts for education 
made by the American colonies, during the poverty^ 
the weakness, and the struggles with an untamed nat- 
ure and wild men, of the first century of their exis- 
tence. These efforts appear even more remarkable 
when we consider the condition of general education 
in the mother country of most of the colonists, and 
generally in Europe. 

In England there is yet no thought of caring for 
the education of the poor, nor is there likely to be for 
a century to come. The instruction of the high-born 
and wealthy is carried on either by tutors, and private 
schools kept chiefly by clergymen, or in those great 
secondary schools called public schools of which we 
have seen that so many were added during the 16th 
century to those already existing. The studies in 
these schools follow closely that literary direction 
marked out in the preceding century by the state of 
culture, and systematized by Sturm, with Latin and 
Greek, themes and versification, as their chief sub- 
ject-matter. 



BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN EDUCATION. 227 

We have seen in France and Germany vigorous 
and to some degree successful efforts to secure atten- 
tion to the vernacular in schools. Like efforts were 
made in England by Eichard Mulcaster in 1582, and 
again by John Brinsley, in 1612, but neither effort 
met with any favor. Brinsley's book on the gram-- 
mar school gives us however a view of the school 
hours which is worth noting. They extended from 
6 A. M. to 5:30 p. M. with a recess of two hours at noon 
and two intermissions of fifteen minutes each. Thus 
there were nine hours of school work ; and honest 
Brinsley seems to fancy that a word of defence is 
needed for the two intermissions lest some may think 
they do nought but play. 

In France, during this century, there was very little 
effort to educate the common people. JSTear its close 
in 1685 La Salle and the order of Brothers of the 
Christian Schools, which he founded, began their ef- 
forts for the gratuitous instruction of poor children, 
and they even established a training school for the 
supply of teachers suitable for their purpose, thus in 
some slight degree mitigating the general ignorance. 
The education of the more opulent classes was largely 
in the hands of the Jesuits who were, says Compayre, 
the real masters of education in France; to whose 
schools must be added the rapidly growing numbers 
of those controlled by the Congregation of the Ora- 
tory recently described. 

In Germany all classes of schools greatly suffered, 
when they were not entirely broken up, by the hor- 



:228 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

rors of the terrible Thirty Years' War. After its close 
in 1648, the universities and secondary schools re- 
vived under the fostering care of cities and princes, 
and the methods prevailing in them were somewhat 
bettered, with the growing regard for the vernacular 
and the increasing use of text-books in German ; 
whilst the study of Greek classics declined, a fact 
which Paulsen illustrates by the very small number of 
editions of Greek authors that appeared between the 
beginning of the 17th century and 1Y70. * With 
this decline in many schools, seems to have been cor- 
related the rise of a kind of Lutheran Scholasticism, 
marked by the study of logic and metaphysics and 
the revival of disputations. 

Popular schools, where they were established, were 
mostly very bad, both from the poverty of the peas- 
antry who had relapsed into a condition of semi-bar- 
barism, and from the lack of well-instructed teachers. 
The teachers are described by Dr. Dittes as wof ully 
ignorant of even the most elementary school subjects. 
Moreover various services besides teaching were ex- 
acted from the schoolmaster. He was church singer, 
organist, and clerk, secretary and servant of the bor- 
ough, and attendant at weddings and baptisms : he 
brushed shoes and clothes, split the pastor's wood, 
threshed his corn, and collected his perquisites : some 
even worked at trades to eke out a wretched subsist- 
ence. Such multiplied and servile tasks might well 
be expected to make of the teacher a mean-spirited 

* <Tescliicbte des Gelehrten Unterriclits, p. 320. 



BEGINNINGS OF AMERICAN EDUCATION. 229' 

creature, and a 17th century writer who is quoted by 
Dittes says of him, " Seven evil spirits possess the 
clerk or so-called village schoolmaster, viz., the proud, 
the lazy, the coarse, the lying, the wicked, the 
drunken, and the stupid devil," to which he adds 
what would naturally accompany such qualities, the 
poor devil.* 

Of all the countries of Europe during the ITth 
century, Scotland made the best and most successful 
provision for general education. An effort was made 
in 1615, and a more effective one in 1633 for the dif- 
fusion of learning among all classes. Finally in 1696- 
a thorough-going law was enacted which required 
landlords to provide schools and school-houses in 
every parish, to nominate masters, to pay them a sal- 
ary ranging from 5£ to 11£, and to fix the fees for 
attendance on the schools. The supervision of these 
schools was vested in the presbyteries, which could 
suspend or dismiss the master. The masters were 
usually able to teach Latin and the elements of Greek 
besides the usual elementary studies. As a result of 
this wise policy, the general intelligence and conse- 
quent influence of the Scots was long notable in 
Europe, and a very great diminution is said to have 
been perceptible in the amount of crime, beggary,, 
and pauperism among the Scottish people. 

* Gesch. der Erziehung und des Unterriclits, pp. 176 and 7. 



CHAPTEK X. 

CHAEACTERISTICS OF EDUCATION IN THE EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY. 

At the beginning of the 18th century education has 
already made great advances beyond the middle ages. 
Much has been done in Scotland for general education, 
and a very promising beginning has been made in 
New England ; something is feebly attempted in the 
same direction in Germany ; and in France the efforts 
of La Salle present some promise for the future. 
Secondary schools have multiplied and improved 
through the adoption of better studies and the sys- 
tematization of their work by Sturm. The universi- 
ties have mostly abandoned their scholastic subjects 
and methods, and have added to their studies some 
elements of mathematics, while pursuing their liter- 
ary and professional work in a wiser spirit. The 
Baconian and Cartesian philosophy has already made 
itself felt, and the lYth century has closed with a 
brilliant era of discovery in which the name of Sir 
Isaac Newton is associated with those of not a few 
worthy compeers. The Latin tongue has lost some- 
thing of its exclusive prominence, and the European 
vernaculars have won a considerable acceptance in 
instruction, paving thus the way for a more general 
education of the masses. Finally the ideas of the 
educational Innovators have already met with a con- 

(230) 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 231 

fiiderable acceptance in their most important points 
by men of great influence in Germany, France, and 
England. 

The 18th century, beginning as it does under such 
auspices, is marked by a very considerable progress 
in promising directions, and by educational move- 
ments of a high degree of interest, but not by so 
great an advance as we might be led to expect. It 
was a century of political and social unrest which cul- 
minated near its close in revolutions. This unrest, 
these eager expectations looking forward to something 
better for humanity in the future, are mirrored in the 
educational not less than in the political history of 
the century. Educationally it was a period of fer- 
mentation, of discontent with the present, its ideals, 
and achievements, of experiments and beginnings 
which should bear their fruits in the coming age. 

What seem to me to be the most significant and 
characteristic phases of the educational efforts of the 
18th century, all bearing the stamp of the discontent 
and expectancy of the age, let us consider in the fol- 
lowing order : 1, The Pietistic movement of Francke 
which aimed to give to education a more deeply spir- 
itual character ; 2, the Real-School movement, which 
starting from an impulse given by Francke and his 
followers, strove to give to the education of students 
not looking to professional careers a more utilitarian 
direction, one more obviously fitting boys for success 
in the practical affairs of life ; 3, the movement for 
the professional training of teachers for their voca- 



232 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

tion, which initiated earlier by the Jesuits and by La 
Salle, during this century took definite form in Ger- 
many and Austria under an impulse proceeding from 
the example and spirit of Francke ; 4, the birth at 
Halle of the modern university spirit of freedom in 
investigation and philosophizing, and the rise of a 
new idea of humanistic studies of which Gesner was 
the leader and Gottingen the center ; 5, the intellec- 
tual interest in pedagogic questions which took form 
in the remarkable theoretic works of Rollin, Eous- 
seau, and Kant ; 6, the Philanthropinic experiment 
of Basedow based on the ideas of Comenius and in- 
spired by Rousseau, which even in its failure exerted 
a very considerable influence in Germany and even 
beyond its borders ; 7, the beginning of the work of 
Pestalozzi ; and 8, the strengthening in Germany of 
the movement for popular education, not only through 
the efforts of several governments, but even more 
effectually by the benevolent exertions of Yon Ro- 
chow, with which movement was also correlated the 
triumph of the vernacular in its use for school and 
university instruction. 

I. Although the Pietistic movement centers in 
Francke, it received its original inspiration from 
Philip J. Spener, a pious Lutheran clergyman who 
died in Berlin in 1705 at the age of seventy, after 
having held high ecclesiastical offices which were 
gained even more by his sterling spirituality of life 
and teaching than by his remarkable eloquence. Spe- 
ner, while adopting in the religious instruction of his 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY CHARACTERISTICS. 233 

flock sensible methods adapted to the experience of 
children and unlettered people, strove with great zeal 
to make religion a matter of the heart not less than 
of the intellect as it had then too exclusively become, 
by treating it pedagogically after the pattern of our 
Saviour. 

His spiritual successor, Augustus Hermann Francke, 
was born at Lubeck in 1663 of respectable parentage. 
He was early left an orphan ; received his gymnasial 
education in Gotha where the notable school reform 
then in progress may possibly have made some im- 
pression upon him ; at the age of fourteen was de- 
clared ri^e for the university ; and in his nineteenth 
year went first to the University of Erfurt and later 
to that of Kiel where Jae spent three years studying 
such branches as physics and botany in connection 
with theology. Whilst in the university and after- 
ward in Hamburg, he gained some experience in 
teaching which had a great influence on his future 
career. 

He found himself disgusted with the cold scientific 
heartlessness of tone of the theology and the religious 
teaching which then prevailed, but after a period of 
deep religious doubt and confiict he attained inward 
peace in believing in a religion which embraced both 
head and heart ; and partly through the influence of 
Spener, he was imbued with that spirit of practical 
religious zeal which issued in Pietism. 

The name Pietists given to the followers of Francke 
at first in derision, as the name Methodists was later 



234 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

given in England to men full of religious zeal, pres- 
ently ceased to have any satirical meaning, and be- 
came a mere descriptive term. After a few years 
disturbed by petty persecutions, Francke was called to 
Halle in 1692 by the influence of Spener, as professor 
of Greek and the Oriental languages in the new uni- 
versity which was about to be founded there, assum- 
ing also the charge of a suburban church ; and there 
he remained till his death in 1Y27. 

The formation of that wonderful series of educational 
and benevolent institutions, which now constitutes his 
fit monument, as well as the chief ornament of Halle, 
was begun in the humblest way in 1695. Pity for 
the misery and semi-barbarism of the poor, both of 
which were aggravated by their dense ignorance, in- 
spired him, when he had found a considerable gift in 
the alms-box for the poor, to start with this a school 
for poor children in his own house, taught by an in- 
digent student of the university. This school rapidly 
increased ; the children of well-to-do citizens were 
admitted to it for pay ; presently it was found needful 
to separate the poor children from the wealthier ones ; 
some sons of nobles applied for admission, and sepa- 
rate arrangements were made for them ; provision 
was added for a few orphan children ; and all these, 
under the creative benevolence of Francke, which by 
its wisdom and unselfishness attracted large gifts 
from many quarters, became the germs of great future 
institutions. 

The poor school developed into what would now 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 235 

be called a Burger school; the school for a richer 
class, into a Latin school or Gymnasium ; the school 
for nobles into what was called a Padagogium ; and 
the provision for a few orphans into Francke's Orphan 
House. To these were added, as means would permit, 
a free table for poor students of the university, an 
oriental college, and an asylum for widows ; and, as 
sources of income, an apothecary shop, a bookstore, 
and a printing house from whose presses have issued 
millions of cheap copies of the Bible and other books. 

All this, it should be remembered, was accomplished 
by the efforts of one man, himself poor, but whose 
faith attended by wise action proved a power to at- 
tract the aid of the rich ; who at first relied wholly 
for the means to support his poor dependents, and to 
erect buildings for their accommodation, on the seem- 
ingly casual gifts of the benevolent which he accounted 
providential ; and who, besides the oversight of these 
great enterprises, did duty as pastor of a church, and 
professor in the University of Halle. 

When Francke died at the age of sixty-four, the 
pupils in his three schools numbered over 2,200, be- 
sides which the teachers, inspectors, servants and 
other employees made over 300 more. In the citizen 
school, besides the usual elementary branches, history, 
geography, and natural history were taught ; in the 
Gymnasium, besides Latin, Greek, and Hebrew, in- 
struction was given in mathematics, history, music, 
and geography ; and the Padagogium was provided 
with a botanical garden, a cabinet of natural history, 



236 THE HISTOKT OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

physical apparatus, a chemical and anatomical labora- 
tory, and a workshop for tnrning and for glass-cutting. 
Especial attention is called to this list of subjects and 
appliances, in Francke's schools, because it shows the 
very considerable attention that was given to what the 
Germans term Real studies, and testifies to a note- 
worthy comprehension of what is the right way to- 
present such studies. It was this feature of these 
schools through which they became the precursors of 
the Real school movement by which Germany con- 
tinues to be so deeply stirred, and which has spread 
to other countries, our own among the number. 

A second notable feature of Francke's organization,, 
was the provision which he made for some prelimi- 
nary training of a professional kind for those who were 
to teach in his schools. The teachers were taken 
from the students of the university, and as the num- 
bers in the schools increased, the force of that truth 
which Raticli had proclaimed doubtless became mani- 
fest, that teaching is an art that must be learned be- 
forehand to some extent, or else acquired at the 
expense of pupils, and too often with irremediable 
harm to them. Hence in 1707 Fran eke formed a 
kind of Teachers' Seminary for those who should 
afterwards teach in his schools, in which for twa 
years they were trained and boarded free of cost on 
their pledge to teach afterwards in his institutions- 
for at least three years. 

In training these men, he laid great emphasis on 
combining with instruction also education, 1. e., care- 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHAKACTEKISTICS. 237 

ful moral and religious training, also on order and 
method, on care for the pupil's individuality, and on a 
conversational and developing procedure instead of 
the prevailing mode of formal exposition. Thus I 
apprehend that he did more than had ever before 
been done to establish a permanent teachers' vocation, 
and became the forerunner of the Teachers' Semi- 
naries which during the century began to spring up 
in Germany. This is said remembering what the 
Jesuits had already done in this direction, but remem- 
bering also that with them teaching was merely a 
stage in the period of the novitiate, and mostly ended 
with the full admission of the novices into the order. 

A third peculiarity of Francke's institutions was 
that which gave to him and his adherents the name 
Pietists. They were " especially characterized by 
their prevailing Christian or perhaps Pietistic ele- 
ment, which appears in their many devotional exer- 
■cises, in the neglect of the Greek classics for the New 
Testament, and in the study of Hebrew for the un- 
derstanding of the Old Testament." A less friendly 
account says '' They heaped devotion on devotion. 
At every opportunity there was prayer, preaching, 
-exhortation, and singing." It was alleged that by the 
emphasis laid on religious exercises the secular studies 
were somewhat neglected, or at least unduly belittled 
in comparison with the attention that was paid to the 
soul's welfare. Though it is possible that this is some- 
what overstated for the schools during Francke's 
time, there is no reason to doubt that under his sue- 



238 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

cessors, in whom religions zeal was not tempered by 
his strong practical sense, his religious ideas were 
pushed even to caricature. 

It is also mentioned as another peculiarity of these 
schools that pupils occupied places in different classes 
or grades according to their progress in different 
studies, e. g., they might be in a fifth year class in 
Latin, and in a second or third year class in mathe- 
matics, or vice versa. 

It may readily be imagined that the zealous young 
men trained in Francke's schools would be likely, 
wherever they went as teachers, to disseminate his 
ideas and make them widely influential in education. 
How real and how important was this influence, be- 
comes apparent in the rise of the Real School idea^ 
and the springing up of Teachers' Seminaries, in 
both which movements Francke's men were leaders. 

II. We have seen the practical direction of studies 
in Francke's schools, which ran parallel with the em- 
phasis laid on religious exercises, and which was 
manifested, not only in the introduction of studies 
properly called Eeal, and in the observational way in 
which they were to be taught, but also in the purely 
practical ends that were proposed in the study of 
Greek and Hebrew, that they might be used for the 
better understanding of the Scriptui-es. Francke's 
aim in education was " Godliness and Prudence "; 
and to the latter corresponded the practical direction 
of studies in which was enclosed the germ of the 
Real-school movement. 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY CHARACTERISTICS. 239 

In the more practical direction of studies, Francke 
by no means stood alone. The university of Halle, 
as is shown by its list of studies outlined by Paulsen 
(p. 361), was a center of influence in this respect, 
where the free-thinking Thomasius was in intellectual 
sympathy with the Pietist Francke, and where Chris- 
tian Wolf became famous, through whose corapends 
*' Philosophy learned to talk German and found access 
to general culture." 

Associated with Francke in his work was Christo- 
pher Sender who early showed a marked preference 
for practical studies, and had in 1706 received a strong 
endorsement of his ideas from the Berlin Society of 
Sciences. The name Real school seems to have been 
first used by Semler in 1739 in a report on his " math- 
ematical, mechanical, and economic Real school in 
Halle," in which he designates as the subjects of such 
a school, besides religion which as a Pietist he would 
naturally , emphasize, "the useful and in daily life 
wholly indispensable sciences," like mathematics, 
drawing, geography, history, natural history, agricul- 
ture, etc., in which he lays stress on the observational 
treatment of the various subjects. It is obvious that 
the ideas of Comenius have struck root, and that his 
text-books, especially the Orbis Pictus, are beginning 
to bear fruit. 

In more than one high educational quarter, at 
about this time, we find complaints of the lack of 
adaptation of studies to the destination of pnpils. A 
single example must sufiice. In 1742, Schottgen, 



240 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

rector of a school in Dresden, after complaining that 
schools are arranged with a view to learning Latin, 
and that children who are destined to business careers 
are forced to learn Latin which is useless to them, to 
the neglect of what would be useful to mechanics, 
artists, or merchants, advises that special classes be 
organized for such pupils. He ends by saying, " I 
know my proposal is already rejected before it has 
been brought to light ; but if what there is in it is 
not yet ripe, we will wait until the time for it ar- 
rives." This is but a specimen of an educational 
feeling of mingled discontent and expectation that 
was constantly growing stronger, and of which the 
Real school movement was one expression. 

The first Real school of any note was established in 
Berlin in lt47 by Johann Julius Hecker, an adherent 
of the ideas of Francke ; and in the succeeding year 
there was added to it a seminary for teachers. Like 
most new enterprises, this school and those which 
followed it fell into errors and extravagances, the 
most serious of which was the great multiplicity of 
the studies that were attempted to be presented^ inso- 
much that not less than eleven hours per day were re- 
quired for school work ; there was also an effort to edu- 
cate for special callings. With time and experience, 
however, such schools have fitted themselves into a 
place in the school system of Germany, as schools of 
modern culture parallel to the schools of classical 
training, and what has recently occurred in Prussia 
would indicate that their modern side is to be spe- 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 241 

cially emphasized. The influence of the idea that 
underlies them has become very apparent far beyond 
the boundaries of Germany. 

III. The movement for the professional training of 
teachers for their work which was initiated in this 
century was unquestionably much the most significant 
educational fact in the century, and fraught with the 
most important consequences to the future of educa- 
tion. Hitherto in the world's history, men had served 
a long and tedious apprenticeship to various arts and 
trades, or had labored years with patience to master 
the learning, the theory, and the technique of the 
several professions ; but curiously enough, the science 
and the art which comprehends in itself the most 
effective mode of presenting and mastering sciences 
and arts, trades and professions, had been strangely 
ignored. 

Sages and philosophers in all ages had dwelt im- 
pressively on the vigor and permanence of the impres- 
sions made on young minds, and on the decisive 
influence they exert in shaping the whole tenor of 
life and in determining the destiny of human beings, 
without appearing to have dreamed that the persons 
to whom was to be entrusted a task so difiicult and so 
delicate had need of any special training for their im- 
portant duties. Hence the vocation of teaching had 
been left wholly to chance, and as we have seen, had 
too often fallen into the hands of those who, with a 
certain modicum of literary acquirements, had been 
found unfit for other employments. 



242 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

Even those persons who were less heedless, had 
adopted without due consideration one or the other 
of two vague and baseless theories, of which one 
made the ability to teach successfully wholly depend- 
ent on knowledge of the subject-matter to be taught, 
as if a knowledge of materia medica, for example, 
would suffice to give skill in prescribing for various 
human ailments, — whilst the other rested on a shad- 
owy notion of something analogous to animal in- 
stinct, called inborn capacity to teach, which displays 
itself spontaneously, as a dog barks or a canary sings. 

We have seen that it was the chief merit of Ratich 
that he clearly conceived the necessity of an art of 
teaching, and his misfortune that he illustrated the 
truth of his idea by the disasters of his career. We 
have seen the success of the Jesuits which was largely 
due to the care with which they trained and super- 
vised the teachers in their schools. An attempt was 
made about the beginning of the 18th century by 
the Grand Duke of Gotha to establish seminaries for 
the training of teachers in his dominions, but it suc- 
ceeded so ill that it was soon given up. Hence the 
significance of Francke's arrangement for training 
teachers, which by its success became the forerunner 
of the system of Teachers' Seminaries. 

In 1748 Hecker established such a seminary in con- 
nection with his Real school, and in 1753, this was 
adopted by Frederick the Great as a state institution, 
thus becoming one of the first two or three j)ubliG 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUKY CHAKACTEKISTICS. 243 

institutions for the prof essional training of teachers. * 
From this time forward the number of such estab- 
lishments rapidly increased, so that by the end of 
the century about thirty existed in the various Ger- 
man states. 

Dittes says of them that in the beginning and for 
a long time afterwards they were merely accessories 
to other educational institutions, and that chief em- 
phasis was laid in them on sectarian instruction, on 
agricultural branches, and on preparing teachers to 
be serviceable as organists and choristers. The 
teachers were to be prepared to eke out their subsist- 
ence, by adding to their meagre pay from the schools 
gains from other industries. Still it was a beginning 
of professional training despite its shortcomings. 

The term Normal School by which teachers' semi- 
naries are generally known in America has so far not 
been used for a reason that will now appear. The 
first noteworthy school to which that name was ap- 
plied, was founded in Vienna in 1771 as a model 
school to which was attached a school for the training 
of teachers. Its first director says of it, "Its chief 
purpose is this, that it may serve as an example to all 
other schools in and around the city and in the coun- 
try ; that in all other schools as well the teachers as 
the pupils may through it be sustained in zeal and 
right procedure ; that especially both spiritual and 
secular schoolmasters, who are hereafter to be em- 

* Such a seminary seems to have arisen in 1751, in Hanover, Schmidt, 
Gesch. der Pad. Vol. III., p. 726 ; and ibid p. 513, he says that Fred'k Wil- 
liam I. in 1735 founded at Stettin the first Prussian Lehrer-Seminar. 



244 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

ployed in the instruction of youth, may in it be in- 
structed and trained in the humanities ; and that 
these may go out from here even as from a center into 
all the schools of the land, and, in accord with the 
new mode of teaching here acquired which is estab- 
lished and brought into use in conformity with nature 
and the spiritual powers of man, may be able to give 
uniform instruction to the youth who are intrusted to 
their care." "^ 

This school was obviously expected to exert its in- 
fluence, quite as much by serving as a model on which 
other schools should be formed, and in accordance 
with whose practice they should shape their methods, 
as by furnishing a few trained teachers to the system. 
It was, says Dr. Dittos, at the same time elementary 
.school. Real school, and Teachers' Seminary, and 
hence bore a stronger likeness to the form into which 
many of our American Normal schools have grown, 
than to the Teachers' Seminaries and Training colleges 
of Europe. 

Besides these schools for the training of teachers 
chiefly for the elementary schools, provisions began 
to be made in this century for the professional prepa- 
ration of teachers for the secondary schools, by the 
establishment in some of the German universities of 
*' seminaries," and lectures on the teaching of German 
and the classic languages, and on pedagogic matters 
in general. The account which Paulsen gives of 
Gesner's pedagogic Seminar, in the newly-founded 

*Dittes, Gesch. der Erzieliung und des Unterrichts, p, 217. 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHARACTEEISTICS. 245 

university of Gottingen, and of the motives whicb 
prompted it, is so interesting and so much to the 
point, that I give it with little abbreviation. 

After stating that " the universally felt want was 
teachers better prepared for their calling," he quotes 
the opinion of Buddaeus that "the origin of the 
whole evil lies in the fact that men are placed in 
charge of the schools who are better fitted for any- 
thing else than for teaching, who are indeed in a con- 
dition neither to think, nor to live, nor even to speak 
correctly." — " The weightiest cause, however, is that 
the universities almost wholly neglect the preparation 
for the teachers' calling. What the theologue, or the 
jurist, or the university professor needs is taught in 
the university, but not what the schoolmaster needs.- 
Men must therefore be taken for school offices who 
have been prepared for other callings." 

Moved by these considerations, about 1738 Gesner 
established in Gottingen a pedagogic seminar, and 
conducted it himself nearly twenty-five years. " The 
introductory direction of the school ordinance desig- 
nates as the end of the institution ' to furnish good, 
well-prepared teachers of, which there is a lack in 
most places, and to that end to permit a certain num- 
ber of such men who devote themselves to the teacher's 
vocation, to be guided in our university to their school 
studies, so that to those who have to occupy school 
offices, or on the other hand to seek out good teachers, 
for their children, opportunity may be offered to 
meet with such.' — The business of the seminar was 



246 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

the training not of learned theologians but of school- 
masters, as appears from its entire arrangement. The 
members, nine in number,were theolognes ; but besides 
their theological course, they were bound to pursue a 
philosophical course embracing all the branches of 
the philosophic faculty, mathematics, physics, history, 
and geography. 

"The philosophic studies in the narrower sense, the 
director of the Seminar presented to them, ....and 
caused them once a week to dispute thereupon in 
Latin. Farther, he presented to them, without ex- 
cluding other things, in two hours daily a general 
instruction on the art of teaching (Informationswerk); 
. . . .Latin and Greek grammar with constant reference 
to school instruction ; in the same way Latin and 
Greek authors to show their proper school treatment ; 
and also the most needful things out of rhetoric, po- 
etics, and antiquities. Finally, that the seminarists 
might have a chance to put their own hands to the 
informationswerh, they were on the one side admon- 
ished to seek everywhere intercourse with children, 
and in especial were to be admitted to give some 
instruction in the schools of Gottingen." 

The example of Gesner was followed by not a few 
of the universities, the lectures on pedagogy as an 
art, being sometimes if not always, given by the pro- 
fessor of Philosophy. Thus the pedagogic lectures 
of the celebrated Kant near the close of the century, 
were given as a natural adjunct to his philosophic 
work. These we shall have occasion to examine 
later. 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 24:7 

Thus during the 18th century, we see the definite 
beginnings of professional training for teachers of 
both liigher and lower schools, and its adoption as an 
affair of the state. It has not yet assumed very great 
proportions, has by no means become ideal in its char- 
acter, and is almost entirely confined to Germany and 
Austria ; but from this significant beginning, it has 
spread widely during the present century to all parts 
of Europe and America, and in the last two decades 
has caused the foundation of chairs of pedagogy in 
several Scottish and American universities. 

lY. The change in the spirit of university work 
which began during the 18th century in the universi- 
ties of Germany, and which has spread thence till it 
is now recognized as the genuine modern university 
spirit, together with the change which was wrought 
in the entire spirit and idea of humanistic instruction, 
deserves to be considered as a very noteworthy char- 
acteristic of the educational history of the century. 
In the one change Halle was the leader, in the other 
Gottingen. 

Although universities had been centuries in exist- 
ence, they had not yet, it might be said, attained 
their intellectual and spiritual majority. They had 
not hitherto, so far freed themselves from dependence 
on the ideas of the past as to assume a position of in- 
dependent leadership in the various realms of inves- 
tigation and of thought. In freeing themselves from 
the domination of scholasticism, they had passed 
under the wiser and more elevating domination of the 



248 THE HISTORY OF MODEEN EDUCATION. 

master minds of Greece and Rome ; and in exchang- 
ing scholasticism for humanism, tliej had rather 
changed masters, than rid themselves of the spirit of 
subordination. Aristotle and Cicero took with them 
the thrones vacated by Peter the Lombard, Duns 
Scotus, and Thomas Aquinas. 

But in lYll, Gundling in Halle, in a public dis- 
sertation propounded the question, "What is the 
office of the university ? " and boldly answered it in 
this wise; — the true office of the university is "To 
guide to the capability of distinguishing truth from 
falsehood .... which is impossible if any limits what- 
ever are set to free investigation." It was, says 
Paulsen, "an unheard of speech." It gave the first 
definite formulation of the modern university spirit, 
the spirit of independence in philosophizing, and of 
freedom in the investigation of all possible questions 
and in declaring the result of one's own free thought 
and research. 

Before the close of the century, nearly all of the 
universities show a profound change from the olden 
lack of independence " in the direction of a free and 
independent scientific investigation ; " and a curious 
index of the change is the displacement of Melanch- 
thon, the 16th century " preceptor Germanise," whose 
compends merely formulate the acquisitions of the 
past, by Christian Wolf, " professor Germanise," to 
whom " Reason is the sole and final judge of true and 
false, and who asks us not to believe, but to doubt, to 
test, and finally to gain conviction solely by the ne- 
cessity of reason." 



EIGHTEENTH CENTUEY CHAEACTEEISTICS. 249 

While this elevating change in the spirit of the 
universities was radiating from Halle, a change 
equally significant for the future of the secondary 
schools, in the entire spirit of humanistic instruction 
and in the ideas by which it was actuated, was begin- 
ning at Gottingen, of which J, M. Gesner was the 
leading spirit. During the preceding century human- 
istic studies had degenerated into mere language 
study, pursued for style, or as a means of access to the 
sources of theology and law. Authors were read, not 
to clarify taste, nor to widen knowledge, but to in- 
crease the stock of words and turns of expression. 

Ernesti in 1738 aptly describes this reading and its 
results ; — " The stujpor jpedagogicus comes necessarily 
from the reading of the ancients when it is directed 
exclusively to stjle. We see then in them, not at all 
what is said, how it is said, with what skill and ele- 
gance it is said, but merely formulae of expression 
which are treasured up for future use. Thus it hap- 
pens, as I have observed in many cases, that when 
pupils have read a work and can translate it into 
German, they are by no means able to state its im- 
port and the manner in which it is executed ; but if 
you question them on the phrases and formulae that 
occur, they know these thoroughly. Hence the youth 
go from the school more stupid than they enter it." 

Paulsen, in describing the Halle pedagogy which 
was typical of the time says, " the literature of the 
ancients appeared as a tolerably superfluous addition 
which served merely to an occasional learned man as 



250 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

a quarry for polyhistoric industry in collecting." 
Hence it is not strange that men had lost faith in such 
studies ; and that they were pursued in the schools 
lifelessly and joylessly from custom as a mere routine. 
It was obvious that unless a great change was made, 
humanistic study would die of inanition. 

The change that was undertaken by Gesner at Got- 
tingen,' ably seconded by Ernesti, his successor in the 
Thomas schule in Leipsic, was in reality a revolution. 
The classic authors were restored to honor as masters 
of thought, instead of being used as illustrations of 
grammar rules, or as mines of words and forms of 
expression by working which diligently, boys might 
be enabled to speak Latin with tolerable correctness. 
They were to be used rather to instil into youth the 
qualities by which they are characterized , or, as Er- 
nesti expressed it, " that from early youth we may 
absorb by intercourse with the wisest and most ele- 
gantly cultured men, the doctrines of philosophy and 
worldly wisdom, whilst at the same time learning at 
first to recognize and appreciate, and then gradually 
to appropriate to ourselves their clearness, dignity, 
and grace, their sagacity and force, their elegance of 
speech and propriety of statement." What was now 
to be aimed at was therefore the ability imaginatively 
to live and think with the ancient masters of thought, 
and to become thereby wiser and more finely cultured 
men. 

To this end, all the aids by which the past might 
be restored to its integrity were diligently studied and 



EIGHTEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 251 

•Qsed by Gesner, by his eminent successor Heyne, and 
later at Halle by F. A. Wolf, the father of high phil- 
ological research. This influential trio, by their own 
diligent efforts, and more effectively by the great 
number of thoroughly trained teachers whom they 
sent forth into the secondary schools, completely revo- 
lutionized humanistic instruction in Germany, and 
placed it on that firm footing which it has ever since 
retained. 

It is not fitting to close this notice of the rise of 
the new Humanism, without due mention of one who 
formulated not a few of the arguments by which 
humanistic study is wont to be defended against at- 
tacks, — Friedrich Gedike, who died in 1803 before 
reaching his fiftieth year, director of a famous school 
in Berlin. " The ancient literature," he declares, " is 
and remains, source of our science. Stop up the 
springs, and the streams will run dry. No study is 
so fitted to awaken and to stimulate all the slumber- 
ing powers of the spirit, to prepare the soul for all 
possible sciences, as this, if only it is pursued in a 
philosophic way, and conformably to the rules of a 
right method." He urges that if one totally forgets 
his classics in after life, he cannot lose that culture 
and suppleness of spirit derived from them ; that 
their remoteness in time and in ideas is a great advan- 
tage, *' Since this strangeness, this transportation into 
remote lands and times has the greatest cultivating 
power for the spirit " ; and that the difficulties which 
grow out of their remoteness is another advantage, 



252 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

since " they give strenuous exercise to the powers and 
SO strengthen them," whilst '' our indigenous litera- 
ture affords pleasure, but without labor." 

Thus the new Humanism passes from the 18th 
century, perfected in all its appointments for afford- 
ing an elegant and many-sided culture, and equipped 
with the arguments by which it may repel all future 
attacks of educational Philistines. 



CHAPTER XI. 

IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL TREATISES OF THE EIGHTEENTH 
CENTURY. 

Section 1st.— Rollin. 

Y. Of the educational works that appeared in this 
century, three have a special interest, viz., Rollin's 
Treatise of Studies, Rousseau's Emile, and the lectures 
of Kant on Pedagogy ; the first of which is a system- 
atic treatise on belles-lettres studies and moral and 
religious training ; the second, an enthusiastic theory 
of education from the standpoint of its author's pe- 
cliliar ideas, a theory, however, which has had a wide 
influence ; and the third, the pedagogical views of 
one of the greatest philosophers, views which are al- 
ways weighty and unusually suggestive. We will 
consider these works in the order in which they were 
published. 

Charles Rollin was born in 1661, and was the son 
of a poor but respectable mechanic in Paris. His 
remarkable youthful promise caused him to be edu- 
cated at the College du Plessis ; he was appointed 
professor of rhetoric at the age of twenty-six ; and 
was twice elected to the dignity of Rector of the 
university of Paris, in which office he distinguished 
himself by useful reforms in both studies and disci- 
pline, that left an enduring mark on the university. 

(253) 



264 THE HISTORY OF MODEEN EDUCATION. 

In his later years, he published an Ancient History^ 
once very famous and still somewhat read, which wa& 
written chiefly with a view to the instruction of 
youth and to vindicate to men the ways of God in 
history. He died in 1741. 

His interest for us in a history of education centres 
in his '^Traite des Etudes," which Yilleraain pro- 
nounced " a monument of good sense and taste," and 
Yoltaire, " a book forever useful." It is certainly a 
most remarkable treatise, for the time when it ap- 
peared, 1726-28, and is still worth the consideration 
of educators, not only for the judiciousness of it& 
views on moral and religious education, but because 
he accompanies his suggestions on methods with abun- 
dant specifications and illustrative examples. The 
doctrines of the treatise have had an enduring influ- 
ence on the French colleges ; and the interest that it 
attracted in England is attested by a translation into- 
English that I have recently seen bearing a date prior 
to 1750. As the work originally appeared it consisted 
of seven Books and a Preliminary Dissertation, to> 
which later was added a Book on primary education. 

In the Dissertation and the 7th Book " On the In- 
ternal Government of Classes and Colleges," Rollin 
gives at large his views on moral and religious educa- 
tion, most of which have now become educational 
commonplaces. A few things will however bear 
repetition even now. " It is virtue only," he says,. 
" which fits men to fill public positions rightly. It 
is the good qualities of the heart which give value to- 



IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL TREATISES. 255 

other qualities, and which, while making the true 
merit of the man, render him also a fit instrument 
for promoting the well-beingof society." This truth 
certainly is as needful to be emphasized to-day as 
when E-ollin uttered it. 

Again, with regard to moral and religious impres- 
sions, he considers all stated lessons ineffectual, since 
they put the young on their guard and are apt to close 
their hearts ; while the lessons of celebrated men in 
history which occur in their reading, seeming to be 
presented by chance, are unsuspected and may be 
made effective by judicious remark. " Not," he sa- 
gaciously remarks, " that I believe it needful to insist 
much on moral reflections. The precepts which relate 
to morals should be short and sharp, and hurled like 
a dart. This is the surest means of causing them to 
gain a permanent lodgment in the soul." 

In the counsels which he gives for the training of 
youth and which he arranges under thirteen heads, he 
follows closely in the footsteps of Fenelon and Locke 
to both of whom he acknowledges his indebtedness ; 
but he mingles in his treatment of their common 
opinions, happy remarks of his own, one of which is 
worth quoting as a specimen of many : " The sov- 
ereign skill in education consists in knowing how, by 
a happy temperament, to ally a strength which holds 
children without repelling them, with a gentleness 
which wins without softening them." 

In turning now to his discussion of studies, I desire 
to call especial attention — (1) to the stress that he 



256 THE IIISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

lays upon the study of the mother tongue, and the 
means which he proposes to acquire elegance in its 
use ; (2) to liis ideas in regard to the teaching of Greek 
and Latin ; (3) to the emphasis with which he recom- 
mends the study of history and the method by which 
he would have it taught ; and (4) to his earnest recom- 
mendation of the training of observation by true 
object teaching. 

(1) Kightly to estimate the merit of Rollin in what 
he proposes for the cultivation of the mother tongue, 
it should be borne in mind that the use of one's ver- 
nacular was little practised in schools or among the 
learned, that Rollin had himself written little save in 
Latin to the age of sixtj^, and that his sketch of a 
method of teaching the vernacular was probably the 
first that was ever published since the scheme of 
Quintilian in his Institutes. 

This will be likely to increase our admiration for 
his pedagogic sagacity, since he recommends and 
shows definitely how to use every means now em- 
ployed by the most enlightened educators in the 
teaching of their mother tongue, viz., early care for 
articulation and pronunciation, and for the correct 
use of words : grammatical study ; literature ; trans- 
lation from other languages ; and composition. 

In grammar, he advises that the knowledge of 
principles should be made progressive, that these be 
carefully applied in the pupil's reading with exact 
reasons for the use of all words, that the rules should 
be carefully chosen with omission of all that are but 



IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL TREATISES. 257 

little used or are beyond the comprehension of pupils, 
and that but little be given each day in a pleasing 
manner under the guise of conversation or of consult- 
ing pupils about proper forms of expression. 

As to literature, he proposes a list of good French 
authors of his day, especially historians, which he 
would have read and explained a half-hour daily ; 
and he gives models of the mode of exposition, the 
etymological and grammatical remarks, the philolog- 
ical explanations, the observations on style, and the 
moral reflections which might appropriately be intro- 
duced. He also makes the novel but sensible sugges- 
tion that when the taste and judgment of youth are 
somewhat matured, it would be well to introduce 
brilliant but sophistical authors for analysis and crit- 
icism. 

Of translation, its difficulties, and exigencies, and 
of the character of good translations, he treats fully, 
with many examples of translations by good authors 
compared with the originals, and their merits or de- 
fects pointed out. Composition he would have begin 
with brief stories or fables, advancing to letter-writing 
with care for its proprieties, and this followed by de- 
scriptions and narrations on familiar subjects, para- 
phrases of passages from classic authors, and finally 
free treatment of subjects suggested by the pupil's 
reading. 

This is a full and generous course of study of the 
mother tongue, so skilfully carried out and so well 
illustrated by examples that the best practice of 



258 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

modern schools can suggest little to improve it save 
in details. It would be interesting to know how far 
that skill in the use of their own tongue which marks 
well-educated Frenchmen, is due to the continuing 
influence of the course and methods suggested by 
Rollin. 

(2) RoUin lays little emphasis on Greek, in which 
he thinks it sufficient that boys should be able to read 
authors understandingly ; but, after the manner of 
his time, he deems it essential that Latin should be 
mastered for all the uses of a current language. Yet 
in this he would have the early instruction given in 
French, " because in every science and in all knowl- 
edge, it is natural to pass from a thing known and 
clear to one unknown and obscure." The necessary 
inflected forms, and the commonest principles of syn- 
tax, he would have early applied in the reading of 
easy passages from authors rather than in attempts to 
write Latin as was then common, additional rules 
being supplied only so fast as they are needed or as 
fair occasions can be made for their use. The writ- 
ing of themes he would reserve for a much later 
stage of progress when boys shall have acquired a 
considerable stock of words and forms of expression, 
requiring them however to use what they possess in 
translating easy sentences into Latin. 

No haste is to be made, since " they will learn fast 
enough if they learn well." He proposes an order 
for the exposition of authors in advanced study, 
which, in accordance with his unique but excellent 



IMPOKTANT EDUCATIONAL TREATISES. 259' 

method, he illustrates by abundant examples in con- 
siderable passages from authors, which are expounded 
as models for students and young professors. In gen- 
eral, it may be said that the reforms in classic instruc- 
tion which he proposes, are in the direction of that 
new and enlightened Humanism, which at a little 
later date began to make its appearance in Germ any » 

(3) The aim that Rollin proposes in the study of 
history is, " To form the mind and heart of youth, to 
inspire in them a taste for reading especially historic 
reading, and to make them understand the good they 
may derive from it " ; and he declares his belief that 
when properly taught it becomes a school of morals^ 
for all men, and hence is " the first master that should 
be given to the young." What he considers right in- 
struction in history will be guided by the following 
principles, — to bring into it clearness and order by 
due attention to geography, and by a proper frame- 
work of chronology, with few but important dates ;. 
to observe the customs, laws, and usages of nations ;. 
to search most of all for truth ; to seek the causes of 
events with diligence ; to make a careful study of the 
characters of nations and of their great men ; to ob- 
serve whatever concerns morals and the proper guid- 
ance of life, and especially what has relation to re- 
ligion. 

More than a third of his treatise is devoted to an 
illustration of these principles, in a series of striking 
historic pictures drawn from ancient times. Nay 
more, deploring the lack of a work on ancient history^ 



•^60 THE HISTORY OF MODEEN EDUCATION. 

-suitable for youth in colleges, he supplied this lack a 
few years later by his well-known History ; but, be- 
lieving "that the natural order demands that in 
history we advance from the ancient to the modern, 
and not deeming it possible to find time during the 
course of the college classes to study that of France," 
he omitted it. For this Professor Compayre seems 
disposed to blame him, instead of being thankful that 
a man already seventy years old, undertook so much 
out of a pure regard for the interests of youth. 

(4) What Kollin suggests for the training of the 
senses occurs in the 6th Book of his treatise, under 
the head of Philosophy. In this he includes pliysics 
and natural history, together with what we now under- 
stand by philosophy. He remarks, " I give the name 
^ Physics for Children,' to a study of nature which 
calls for little but the use of the eyes, and which 
for this reason is in the power of every one, even of 
■children. It consists in giving attention to the ob- 
jects which nature presents to us, in regarding them 
with care, and in admiring their various beauties, but 
without seeking into their hidden causes, which is the 
province of the physics of the scientist. I say that 
-even children are capable of this, for they have eyes, 
and do not lack curiosity." 

He proposes a series of object lessons drawn from 

plants and animals, which he recommends to mingle 

-aptly with brief reflections " suited to form the heart, 

and to lead through nature to religion." He crowns 

-all this by giving sensible practical directions to 



IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL TREATISES. 261 

teachers how to prepare themselves for giving these 
object lessons successfully, foreseeing every difficulty 
that is likely to arise, and striving in this as in every 
other branch he teaches, to make his treatise a prac- 
tical guide to teachers. 

When we consider that, though reformers like 
Comenius and Locke had for nearly a century insisted 
on the proper use of the senses, the scheme of Kollin 
is doubtless the first definite proposal of a means, 
pleasant and not over-loaded to accomplish a purpose 
long considered desirable, and that it is even so well 
conceived that it might now be profitably copied, we 
shall find new occasion to admire the pedagogical sa- 
gacit}^ of its author. 

Finally, what we ought especially to admire in 
Rollin is the spirit of practical pedagogic helpfulness 
that characterizes every part of his treatise. Like 
the skilful architect, he accompanies all his plans with 
clear and definite specifications. Whether in moral 
teaching, or in the various belles-lettres branches, or 
in the training of the senses, he illustrates all the 
plans he proposes with examples so numerous, so 
wisely chosen, and so thoroughly presented, as to 
make their adoption by young professors, easy. In 
this he certainly had no predecessors among writers 
on education ; nor since his day have there been., 
many who, in this respect, have equalled him. 

Section 2d.— Rousseau. 

There are few books which a man of taste who is 
interested in educational questions would be likely ta 



:262 thp: history of modern education. 

read with greater pleasure than Rousseau's Emile. 
There is certainly none in which the reader has need 
of greater judgment and more constant care, that he 
may disentangle the valuable educational truths it 
presents, from the maze of brilliant sophisms and 
striking paradoxes in which they are often enveloped, 
.and which are the more dangerous because the author 
himself evidently presents them in good faith, and 
urges them with an elegant warmth and grace that 
few can wholly resist. Nor is there any other work 
on education of which it is so difficult to give a brief 
but satisfactory account, — an account that shall fairly 
present the author's most prominent ideas with some- 
thing of his own coloring, emphasizing that to which 
he gives emphasis, and overlooking no important error, 
yet being blind to no important truth. 

This difficulty arises in part from his carelessness 
about consistency ; but still more from the fact that 
his plan of carrying an individual presented under 
the name of Emile through what he considers a typi- 
cal course of normal development, from infancy to 
adult years, not stopping even with his marriage, but 
oxhibiting the results supposed to follow from such 
a training when his hero falls into divers unlooked-for 
misfortunes, — gives opportunity to this erratic genius 
to discuss all kinds of social, political, moral, and re- 
ligious questions, which he introduces so ingeniously 
that they seem wholly germane to the pedagogic mat- 
ter in hand, but end often by wholly obscuring it. 

It is easy to select a certain number of maxims from 



IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL TREATISES. 263 

Kousseau, or even sometimes to cull their opposites, 
and to call them his fundamental pedagogic ideas. 
This a number of persons have done, but without any 
very close agreement on what is fundamental. Yon 
Kaumer more wisely has attempted an abstract quoted 
in the author's own words under proper heads, but 
no abstract however fairly made, can give a just repre- 
sentation of E-ousseau. There is in the Emile little of 
educational value which is absolutely new ; yet Rous- 
seau, possesses in a transcendent degree the art of so 
presenting and enforcing old truths that they impress 
themselves on the mind as they had never done be- 
fore, and produce all the effect of novelty. In this 
sense he may be said to have effectually rediscovered 
and taken possession of several pedagogic regions 
which had before been sighted rather than appropri- 
.ated. The pity is that he has so often marred the 
happy islands on which he plants his standard by 
peopling them with chimeras. 

Who then was this Rousseau, and through what ex- 
periences was he qualified to produce a work which 
has doubtless had great influence on more recent 
-educational history ? He was born in Geneva in 1712, 
his father who was a watchmaker being of French 
■origin, and apparently not distinguished for honesty. 
Deprived from infancy of a mother's care, he grew 
up under the charge of an aunt, a volatile and sensi- 
tive child, feeding his young fancy with romances, 
none of which he understood, as he says, but all of 
which he felt. He was apprenticed first to an attor- 



264 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

ney and then to an engraver, but showed no capacity 
for either employment. From the latter he ran away,, 
and henceforth his life was unsettled and homeless. 
He was for a time in a Catholic school, and became a 
Catholic, renouncing this faith later when he had 
gained distinction for Protestantism, but reflecting no 
credit on either. He entered the service of a noble- 
man for some time who strove to educate him for a 
higher position. Then from the age of twenty-one 
he lived for some years with Mme. de Warens, where 
he pursued with great zeal philosophic and political 
studies, gained some knowledge of Latin, and acquired 
that store of materials of which later he made such 
brilliant use. 

It is needless to go into detail on the steps of his 
erratic and unhappy career. Whatever of pedagogic 
experience he had was gained in a few years as tutor 
in a family ; but he seems always to have been a keen 
observer of human nature, especially as exhibited in 
the young, for which his sensitive temperament pe- 
culiarly fitted him ; and to this his Emile owes much 
of whatever pedagogic value it possesses. Yet with 
all his keen perception of child character and child 
modes of gaining knowledge, he showed no love for 
his own five children ; for he sent them one after the 
other, as soon as they were born, to a foundling hos- 
pital, leaving no marks by which they might after- 
wards be identified and reclaimed. This, and many 
other discreditable circumstances of his unsettled life, 
we know from his astonishing "Confessions," in 



IMPOETANT EDUCATIONAL TEEATISES. 265 

which they are detailed with amazing frankness and 
often with bitter self-reproaches. Yet he considers 
himself a being innocent of wrong because his inten- 
tions were always good, but that he was greatly mal- 
treated by fortune and by false friends. 

Despite all the errors and miseries of his career, he 
gained high reputation as a brilliant and versatile 
writer. Besides his Confessions, and the Emile which 
is his most enduring work, he wrote several philo- 
sophic and political treatises which attracted much 
attention in that excited period, and which are thought 
by some to have hastened the French Revolution, 
whose approach he predicted in the 3d Book of the 
-Emile while urging the claims of manual employ- 
ments on the sons of high-born families. It is more 
probable that his treatises are rather symptoms of the 
deep-seated disease which was silently but surely eat- 
ing out the life of the French monarchy and aristoc- 
racy, than influential causes of that bloody tragedy. 
His melancholy career ended in 1778, not without 
suspicions of suicide. 

The chief pedagogic merit of the Emile, in my 
opinion, is to be found in these four things : viz., (1) 
that it is the first noteworthy study of child nature 
and child development from a pedagogical standpoint ; 
(2) that it everywhere emphasizes the absolute im- 
portance of training the senses and bodily capabilities 
as the only sure basis of memory, judgment and 
understanding ; (3) that it gives hints and even more 
explicit directions for the beginning of instruction 



266 THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

from the standpoint of the child's experience, in such 
branches as geography, physics, and history, the spirit 
of which methods has entered into modern practice ; 
and (4) that in the 5th Book we have what Dr. Dittes 
considers the best treatise that has yet appeared on 
the education of girls. 

Every one of these great merits is marred by grave 
faults of extravagance and paradox, by graver errors 
of opinion on points often of vital moment, by sug- 
gestions of wholly impracticable means, and by 
expectation of results whose realization would be fa- 
tal to the author's ultimate purpose. Hence, that we 
may better understand the cause of Rousseau's va- 
garies, and so be the better able to discern and appre- 
ciate the truth he delivers, it will be profitable for 
us to consider his most fundamental errors before dis- 
cussing the undeniable merits that have just been 
named. We will confine ourselves to the two that 
are really fundamental, because they give form and 
coloring to his entire treatment of the problem of 
right education, and are the source of most of his par- 
adoxes. 

He sets out with the postulate that " all is good as 
it issues from the hands of the Author of things; 
everything degenerates in the hands of man." In 
this he intends no reference to the dogma of the fall 
of man and its consequences ; but he means the man 
of any period, all whose faults, prejudices, and evil 
inclinations he considers due to the perversion of ten- 
dencies which originally were wholly good, by influ- 



IMPOETANT EDUCATIONAL TREATISES. 267 

ences exerted upon him by his fellow men, and that 
too mostly at an age when he has power neither to 
resist nor to choose. We need not pause to consider 
the consequences of this doctrine in regard to man's 
responsibility for his own mature acts, nor its contra- 
diction of the history of progressive human advance- 
ment which on this theory would have been impossible, 
nor its contravention of the universal opinion of 
mankind as expressed in their actions ; we have only 
to observe its effects on his mode of treating the 
education of the young. 

Believing that the native state of man is good, it is 
a question how to preserve his primitive goodness, 
and to allow it to develop without perversion. Be- 
lieving that perversion and degeneracy are due to 
men and society, it is a question how to protect the 
child from the malign influence of his fellows. Hence 
his repeated insistence on restoring the child to "the 
state of nature," and his constant reference of every- 
thing to this assumed state of nature. He means by 
this, not exactly the savage state, for which in some 
of his writings he is thought to betray a predilection 
born of ignorance ; but a fancied state, made up of 
man's best aspirations after the agreeable, the fit, and 
that which will promote happiness and perfection, 
when unchanged by the influences to which he is sub- 
jected. 

Hence, that this fancied state of nature may be 
secured, that nought may interfere with conformity 
to these primitive dispositions to goodness, and, in 



268 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

short, to assure a complete control of all circumstances 
that maj influence character, — his Emile is to be iso- 
lated from his fellows until the age of fifteen ; to be 
reared in the country, communing solely with nature, 
in company with a paragon of a tutor who shares all 
with him ; to be subjected to no obvious control save 
that which comes from the invincible facts and proc- 
esses of nature ; to form no habitudes, and to shape 
no opinions save those which the phenomena of 
nature cause spontaneously to germifiate within him ; 
to gain no moral ideas save that of property as the 
result of individual efforts; and, indeed, ''to lose 
time " rather than, in efforts to utilize it, to run a 
risk of thwarting the work of nature in him. 

Emile is not even to know how to read until he is 
twelve years old, when Eousseau thinks that the 
processes of physical growth have so far advanced as 
to afford a relative surplus of energy which may 
safely be used for his intellectual development. 
These are a few of the more obvious vagaries into 
which he is led by his idea of conforming education 
to a fancied state of nature, and thus promoting the 
innate dispositions to goodness ; but this idea colors 
every part of his scheme of education for both sexes. 

Rousseau's second fundamental error controls the 
plan of his work and its division into distinct parts or 
Books. It is the assumption that within certain tol- 
erably well-marked limits of age, certain capabilities 
of our nature so predominate as to be practically un- 
mixed with any powers or tendencies that look to 



IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL TREATISES. 269 

more advanced stages for their complete develop- 
ment. Thus he conceives four, or more properly five 
well-marked stages of development, forming the five 
Books of his treatise. 

The first deals with the vegetative age, and includes 
the care and training of the infant from birth until it 
is able to talk. The second period ends at the age of 
twelve, during which he assumes that the senses and 
the physical nature dominate, without reason and cer- 
tainly without moral ideas ; and this period he would 
dedicate to securing physical well-being, to thorough 
training of the senses, and to permitting the child to 
be acted upon by and to conform himself to the inter- 
play of nature's forces. In the third period, between 
the ages of twelve and fifteen, judgment and reason 
are supposed to make their appearance, and this, 
which is one of the most suggestive Books, is there- 
fore dedicated to a scheme of rapid intellectual devel- 
opment. 

The fourth period, between the ages of fifteen and 
twenty, the critical period as he considers it, is that 
in which, with the awakening of the human passions, 
he conceives that the youth first becomes capable of 
moral and religious ideas, and hence that moral and 
religious education should here begin. This fourth 
Book forms nearly a third of the entire work, but 
lengthy as it is, it is never tedious. It abounds in 
passages of striking eloquence, some of which have 
.become famous, but is marked by an unusual abun- 
dance of his peculiar notions. Some of its religious 



270 THE HISTORY OF MODEEN EDUCATION. 

ideas which have been generally condemned, were 
considered of so dangerous a tendency as made it ex- 
pedient for the author to flee from France to avoid 
imprisonment, and caused the book to be publicly 
burned by the Protestants of Geneva as well as by 
the Catholics of Paris. 

The fifth Book which treats of female education 
under the name of Sophie, the future spouse of 
Emile, is devoted also to the completion of Emile's 
education, by his conceiving an ardent affection for 
one of the opposite sex, by his undertaking foreign 
travel that he may learn complete self-government 
and gain the knowledge and experience essential to 
the exercise of his duties as a citizen, and by his 
assumption of the offices of husband, father, and 
member of the state. 

Such is an outline of Rousseau's scheme of educa- 
tion, and such the assumption on which it is based. 
And yet it needs no unusual observation of children 
and youth to assure any one, not influenced by a the- 
ory, that Rousseau's idea of the normal course of 
human development is wholly incorrect ; that, in 
point of fact, judgment and reason do not wait till 
the twelfth year before they can be effectually ap- 
pealed to in matters within the range of the child's 
experience; and that still less is the ^^outh incapable 
of true sympathy or real ideas of right and wrong 
until the age of puberty : indeed, without early sub- 
jection to authority, and without proper intercourse 
with his fellows, he would be practically ignorant of 
the natural relations on which morality is based. 



IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL TKEATISES. 2Y1 

And yet it is obvious that this erroneous assump- 
tion gives the key to the entire plan of his work. 
Still more, it colors largely his entire mode of treat- 
ment of his scheme of education. For example, in 
Book 2d, he attacks Locke's judicious maxim of using 
reason with children, with the argument that at the 
age of ten children not only have no apprehension of 
reason but have no need of training. " Reason is," 
he says, ^' the rein of strength, and the child has no 
need of that rein. Let him instead feel early on his 
proud head the hard yoke which nature imposes on 
man, — the heavy yoke of necessity." Many exam- 
ples akin to this could be cited to show the manner in 
which this fundamental error influences his treat- 
ment of educational questions. 

In my opinion the primal source of most of the 
extravagances which mar his work, obscure his mer- 
its, and furnish to his critics a fruitful supply of 
injurious quotations, may be found in these two er- 
roneous assumptions which we have just considered ; 
and it is quite possible that when we see that Rous- 
seau's chimerical ideas flow not from mere wanton- 
ness and caprice, but are the natural outcome of 
honest but erroneous convictions in a spirit so fanciful 
as his, we shall gain a fairer view of the spirit by 
which he is actuated, and shall be in a better position 
to pass a candid judgment on his undeniable merits. 
Moreover, the examination of his errors has afforded 
a convenient means to give a brief and connected 
view of the plan and scope of his treatise, any ana- 



272 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

lytic discussion of which would be both tedious and 
confusing. We are now in a position to review in a 
spirit of fairness his substantial contributions to a 
sound pedagogy. 

(1) In the very preface of his treatise, he claims as 
its chief merit that it is intended to be a profound 
and careful study of the psychology of childhood. 
" We do not know childhood," he says. " From the 
false notions we have of it, the farther we go the 
more widely we stray. The wisest men confine them- 
selves to what it is important that men should know, 
without considering what children are in a condition 
to understand. They always seek for the man in the 
child without thinking of what he is before becoming 
a man. This is the study to which I have applied 
myself the most, so that if my whole method should 
prove chimerical and false, one may always set out 
from my observations. I may have seen very ill what 
should be done, but I believe I have observed well 
the being on whom we must operate. Begin then by 
studying your pupils better, for very surely you do 
not know them." 

Again in Book 3d he exclaims, " I wish some ju- 
dicious man would give us a treatise on the art of 
observing children." This wish has awaited its ful- 
filment until recent times, when the trained intelli- 
gence of men like Perez and Taine, Preyer and Chas. 
Darwin, has been turned to the operations of young 
minds. To Rousseau, however, is due the credit of 
having first called definite attention to the need of 



IMPOETANT EDUCATIONAL TREATISES. 273 

such a study, and of having done something of value 
in it himself. The record of this may be found in 
Book 2d of the Emile, where he treats of the training 
of the senses and of teaching the child by sense ex- 
periences his actual relation to the material world, 
its properties, and its forces. 

Here also we may justly admire his acuteness in 
observing that the speech of children has often " a 
different meaning for them and for us," a fact to 
ivhich he rightly attributes many of the amusing say- 
ings of children, and which he thinks causes errors 
sometimes of lasting consequence. In this connection, 
too, it may be remarked that we owe to Kousseau a 
vigorous plea for care in forming the early speech of 
the child, and in assuring a right use of the organs of 
speech. It would be easy were it needful to multiply 
quotations showing Rousseau's deep appreciation of 
the truth that any reliable science of education must 
liave its foundations in a thorough study of the opera- 
tions of the young intelligence. 

(2) Rousseau was by no means the first to call at- 
tention to the importance of training the senses and 
I)odily capabilities. We have already seen the em- 
phasis laid on this by Comenius and Locke, and that 
even the cautious and conservative Rollin would have 
the exercise of the senses cared for during the entire 
childhood and youth, and expects from this care note- 
worthy results. But no one before nor since Rousseau, 
not even Pestalozzi, has like him made his entire 
:«cheme of education depend on sense and bodily 
training, or on the results flowing from this. 



274 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

He proposes that to the twelfth year the entire ac- 
tivity of the child shall be given to this kind of train- 
ing, no literary tasks, no learning even to read, unless 
he desires it for its present obvious utility, but all 
care to be devoted to the senses and the body, and to 
their development. "Do not exercise strength only,'' 
he says, " but also all the senses which direct it; de- 
rive from each all the aid possible, verifying the im- 
pressions of one by another ; measure, count, weigh, 
compare ; do not use strength until after having esti- 
mated resistance, and always let the estimate of the 
effect precede the means." 

Bat besides this thorough cultivation of the senses 
and muscular adaptations, insisted on by him during 
the period of childhood, it should be remembered that 
Rousseau's entire scheme of advanced education pre- 
supposes trained senses and physical capabilities- 
obedient to the will, and calls for their thorough use- 
as an indispensable means for gaining usable knowl-^ 
edge, the only kind of knowledge that he values. Inr 
this line is his insistence on manual training. It is 
only within the last score of years that efforts have 
been made to give to youth some dexterity in the use 
of common tools ; yet Rousseau, adopting a suggestion? 
of Locke, urges manual training at much length and 
with great eloquence, not only as a useful means of 
education, but also as a resource in unforeseen mis- 
fortunes ; and it is in this connection that he makes 
his celebrated prophecy of the near approach of an age- 
of political and social revolutions. 



IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL TREATISES. 275 

(3) In intellectual education as a whole, he empha- 
sizes all the fundamental principles which are now 
commonly accepted in instruction, viz., thorough use 
of the observing powers, the self-activity of pupils 
instead of mere receptivity, advancement by easy and 
natural steps, the cultivation of mental power rather 
than the loading of memory, holding the interest of 
pupils by the presentation of proper subject-matter, 
the avoidance of over-crowding and precocity, of sham 
knowledge and superficiality, and in general, con- 
formity to the powers, needs, and individuality of 
the child, ^one of these principles were wholly new : 
every one of them had been advanced by preceding 
Innovators : but Kousseau vividly exhibits them all 
in action, and exemplifies their possibilities in the 
development of the child. In his hands they are no 
longer abstract propositions, but embodied and there- 
fore impressive realities. 

Yet the exemplification of these great principles is 
by no means the measure of his services to intellec- 
tual education. His most significant addition to the 
art of instruction, is his suggestion of the methods of 
teaching such subjects as geography, physics, history, 
civics, and drawing. In physics, for example, he 
would begin with the observation of familiar physi- 
cal phenomena, in which Emile does all the work and 
makes the discoveries with an imperceptible guidance 
of his tutor, devising and making apparatus to verify 
the results of his observations, and thus, slowly in- 
deed but surely, reaching the conception of physical 
uniformities of operation, or laws. 



276 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

In the study of geography, he would set out from 
the terrestrial features of the home ; in history, from 
biography ; in civics, from the most familiar relations 
of men to their fellows ; and in drawing, from at- 
tempts at delineating common things rather than 
from copying pictures already made. Save in the 
case of history, the first effective suggestion of these 
sensible modes of procedure seems to have come from 
Rousseau, and their adoption marks an important 
advance in the art of instruction. 

(4) The 5th Book of the Emile in which Rousseau 
gives his ideas of the proper education of women, has 
the fewest glaring faults, and is the most satisfactory 
part, of the- en tire treatise. The aim that he proposes 
for this education, viz., to fit woman to please and in- 
terest man, to be his complement and fit companion, 
and to make his home pleasant, is not a very lofty one 
according to some modern ideas; yet despite some 
faults, Dr. Dittes is right in considering it one of the 
best treatises on female education that has yet ap- 
peared. 

He draws the picture of the girl as she appears to 
him to be by nature, and again as he thinks she should 
be when properly educated, with his usual skill and 
grace. Like Fenelon, he objects to a conventual 
education for girls, and for the like reasons. Rather 
he would have them educated at home under the eye 
of the judicious mother, by whose wise guidance they 
should be taught to know the world as it really is, to 
penetrate its unreality, and to gain wisdom to avoid 



IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL TREATISES. 277 

its allurements. Home and family life are, in his 
opinion, the sphere of good women, to a taste for 
which they should be trained by the example of good 
mothers, and by a sweet home life throughout their 
youth. For success within this sphere they should be 
carefully educated, by the development of taste that 
they may please all within its circle, by acute knowl- 
edge of human nature and its springs of action, that 
they may manage with tact in all social relations, and 
by a proper cultivation of intellect and heart, that 
they may be interesting companions and retain the 
enduring esteem of husbands and friends by their in- 
telligence and unpretending virtues. 

He would have the moral and religious education 
of girls very early begun, because, as he says, " If one 
waited until they are able to discuss those deep ques- 
tions methodically, we should run the risk of never 
discussing them at all " ; which is about equally true 
of both sexes, though Rousseau^s preconceived theory 
blinds him to the fact. In justice to him however it 
should be added, that he thinks the religious beliefs 
of women are more subject to authority, and their 
conduct more subject to public opinion, than is the 
case with men ; and that hence it is needful only to 
state to them clearly what is to be believed and done ; 
— a statement which makes his inconsistency in the 
religious education of the two sexes, a trifle less glar- 
ing. 

Moral and religious instruction, he would not per- 
mit to be gloomy and irksome : it should be bright 



278 THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

and brief, exact and reverent, and be constantly im- 
pressed by corresponding example. But " the idea 
of duty has no force unless we join to it motives 
which impel us to fulfil it. Hence make girls feel all 
the value of wisdom and virtue, and you will make 
them love them," by showing " that their virtues 
and their duties are the source of their pleasures and 
the foundation of their rights." 

The idea of the existence of a Supreme Arbiter of 
human destinies, whose children we all are, and 
through whom all human rights and duties are rooted 
in the very nature and relations of things, he thinks 
should be early impressed on girls and made habitual 
with them. But if on girls, why not equally on boys? 
We have seen his reasons, but they are obviously in- 
sufficient. Were his vague idea expanded into the 
form of an argument, it would take this form : Rea- 
son does not awake till about the age of twelve ; but 
girls will believe without reason while boys will not ; 
hence make a wide difference in the time and mode of 
their religious and moral education. In this as in 
other things, he insists '' that everything consists in 
re-establishing or preserving the natural sentiments," 
repeating his fundamental idea that man by nature is 
wholly good, and that his errors and corruptions 
spring from education and external infl^uences. 

As in the education of the boy he would make 
Robinson Crusoe his chief text-book, so in Sophie's 
hands he would place Telemaque that she may form 
from it her ideal of the heroic youth, who alone shall 
be worthy of her feminine perfection. 



IMPOKTANT EDUCATIONAL TREATISES. 279 

Such then appear to me to be the most salient and 
fruitful errors, and such the most important teachings 
of this remarkable book, a book which has inspired 
many reformers of education like Basedow, and Pesta- 
lozzi, and Froebel, and which is said not to have been 
without influence on philosophers like Kant. It is 
not only the most influential pedagogic work which 
the 18th century produced, but it is also the best index 
of the interest with which educational questions were 
regarded in the period of feverish unrest which pre- 
■jceded the outbreak of the French Eevolution. Other 
French thinkers of more philosophic character, like 
Oondillac, Helvetius, and Diderot, contributed to 
pedagogy ideas all of which are of interest, and some 
of them, of value, e. g., Diderot's principles in the 
selection and arrangement of studies, and Helvetius's 
belief that all men who are ordinarily well organized 
have equal potential talent ; but as these works are 
little known outside of France, it does not seem ex- 
pedient to dwell upon them here. 

Section 3d.— Immanuel Kant. 

The father of the famous German philosopher 
Xant was a saddler, and is said to have been of Scotch 
descent, to which fact the curious in such matters 
might be inclined to attribute the metaphysical ge- 
nius of his son. Immanuel was born in Konigsberg 
in 1724. He received his early education in his na- 
tive place, and after some years' experience as a 
private tutor, he took his degree at the university of 
Xonigsberg in 1755. The next fifteen years of his 



280 THE HISTORY OF MODEEN EDUCATION. 

life were spent in lecturing on metaphysics and math- 
ematics, during which he was offered and refused the 
chair of poetry. Finally in 1Y70 he was made pro- 
fessor of logic and metaphysics in his native univer- 
sity in which he passed the remainder of his life, 
dying in 1804. 

Such was the inflexible regularity of his habits^ 
and such the tenacity of his affection for the city of 
his birth, that during the entire period of his profes- 
sorship he is said never once to have set foot out of 
Ivonigsberg. The uneventful record of his life is, 
that he was born, lived fourscore years during which 
he never married, did a famous work in his chosen 
line, and died full of honors as of years,— all in Kon- 
igsberg. 

As professor of philosophy, he gave lectures on 
pedagogy, which from their form in his collected 
works, would seem to have been more than once re- 
modeled, though without material change in their 
fundamental ideas. Kant evidently entertained a 
lofty idea of the power and effects of education. 
" Man," he says, " can become man only through 
education ; he is nothing but what education makes 
him, and he can be educated only by man." Believ- 
ing thus, he more than once expressed the wish that 
an experiment might be made under favorable con- 
ditions, remote from the interference of parents and 
princes, to test how far education can be carried and 
what may be its results. "This only," he says, "is 
the cause of evil, that nature is not brought under 
rules. In man lie only the germs of good." 



IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL TREATISES. 2S1 

Hence tlie need of an education directed accord- 
ing to an ideal of humanity and its entire destiny. 
Towards this, however, he admits that mankind can 
approximate but slowly; "for insight depends on 
education, and in turn education depends on insight, 
which can come only from the transmitted experience 
and knowledge of many generations." As a step in 
the right direction, he proposes that children should 
be educated, not merely for the present state of 
things, but for the future possibly better condition of 
the race. 

But " if children are to become better than their 
parents, pedagogy must become a study, otherwise 
nothing is to be hoped for from it." " Unless mech- 
anism in education is changed to science and thus 
puts forth Tiarirmnioiis efforts, one generation might 
pull down what another had built up." Hence " the 
regulation of the schools should depend only on the 
judgment of the most enlightened judges. — Only 
through the efforts of men of more extended pur- 
poses, who have at heart the elevation of the world, 
and who are capable of the idea of a future better 
condition, is the gradual approximation of human 
nature to its destined end possible." " Behind educa- 
tion lies hidden the great secret of the perfection of 
human nature." 

In the view of Kant education is made up of disci- 
pline, cultivation, and the attainment of prudence and 
morality. The human being needs discipline to tame 
his original savagery, to guard" him from departing 



282 THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

from true manhood through yielding to animal im- 
pulses, to bring him gradually to all the native dispo- 
sitions of humanity, and finally to lead him to the 
right use of his own reason. He needs cultivation 
that all his capabilities may be adapted to the accom- 
plishment of any desired end ; and of these two, 
Kant says that early discipline is the more vitally 
necessary, for "He who is not cultured is rude, while 
he who is not disciplined is barbarous, and neglect of 
discipline is a greater evil than neglect of culture, for 
this can be remedied later whilst that can never be," 

Again man needs to be made prudent, that he may 
be fitted for the society of his fellows, may be es- 
teemed and have influence through the possession of 
good manners, politeness, and a worldly wisdom in 
virtue of which he is able so to bring his talents to 
bear upon other men as to make them helpful to his 
purposes. Finally he should be made moral that he 
may be disposed to choose only really good ends, 
ends which are held in esteem by every one and 
which can be the ends of all under like conditions. 
*' How exceedingly important it is," he says, " to 
teach children from their youth up to avoid vices, not 
merely because God has forbidden them, but because 
they are in themselves worthy to be avoided " ; also 
to reverence and regard the rights of men, and es- 
pecially of the poor and lowly. To this last end, 
Kant would have a catechism of right prepared for 
schools and an hour given for its daily 'study, " that 
the children may learn and take to heart the rights of 



IMPOETANT EDUCATIONAL TEEATISES. 283 

man, that thing most valued by God (Augapfel) on 
earth." 

From Kant's ideal of education, it is obvious that 
his chief interest centres in character-development, 
which he terms jpractical education because it has to 
do with conduct and the training of the will. Through 
this, the young human being is to be fitted to become 
a self-directing and free-acting man, by learning so to 
control his selfish inclinations that he may befitted to 
become a member of society, by attaining freedom of 
the will through the habitual recognition of its limi- 
tations as well as through its habitual proper use, and 
by gaining an inward value and worthiness of his 
own, and never belittling this worth of humanity in 
his own person by vices or mean compliance. 

The great problem of education, in the view of 
Kant, is how to combine subjection to legal compul- 
sion with the proper use of individual freedom. " I 
should accustom my pupil," he says, "to endure a 
limitation of his freedom, and at the same time guide 
him in making a proper use of his freedom. Without 
this, all is mere mechanism, and the youth released 
from tutelage does not know how to make a proper 
use of his freedom." He recommends that from early 
years, the child be left free to act where he will not 
ignorantly hurt himself or interfere with the rights of 
others, that he be taught that he cannot gain his ends 
save by permitting others to gain theirs, and latest of 
all that he be shown that whatever compulsion is 
imposed on him is in the interest of his own true 



284 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

freedom, guiding liim to its orderly use that he may 
not be dependent on the care of others. 

The will is not to be broken, but trained to yield to 
natural obstacles. " Breaking of the will generates a 
slavish way of thinking ; natural opposition on the 
contrary brings about tractableness." Both in this 
sentence and in his discussion of punishments, Kant 
strikes the key-note of Herbert Spencer's chapter on 
Moral Education. 

Mere empt}^ emotion, and a sentimental sympathy 
issuing in nothing, he would discard as factors in edu- 
cation : " Let the child, he says, be full not of feeling, 
but of the idea of duty;— let him learn to put self- 
respect and inward worthiness, in place of the opinions 
of men ; inward worth of action and accomplishment 
in place of words and emotions ; reason in place of 
feeling ; and clieerfulness and good-humored piety in 
place of a cruel, timid, and gloomy devotion." 

What Ivant considers the vital traits of an estimable 
character are these four, 1st obedience, i. e., subjection 
to lawful authority and to the idea of duty ; 2d truth- 
fulness which he considers " the essential foundation 
of character ; " 3d sociality or inclination to friend- 
ship with one's fellow men ; and 4:th candor which 
he calls " a modest self-confidence." This statement 
of what should be considered the essential traits of a 
worthy character has great interest as originating with 
the greatest pf philosophers. 

Early religious ideas, he declares, should be incul- 
cated, not as matters of memory or imitation, but as a 



IMPOETAKT EDUCATIONAL TREATISES. 285 

general law of duty rooted in the nature of things 
and independent of the humors of men. Religion is 
applied morality, that is, morality applied to the 
knowledge of God. " We must first begin," he says, 
" with the child from the law which it has in itself. 
Man is blameworthy in himself when he is sinful ; 
this is grounded in himself, and not because it is for- 
bidden by God.' The divine law must appear at the 
same time a law of nature, for it is not arbitrary." 
The idea of God is best given under the analogy of a 
Father under whose care we are, from which naturally 
springs the conception of all men as one great family, 
and the cosmopolitan sentiment on which Kant lays 
stress. A few ideas of the Supreme Being should 
thus be given to children that they may know when 
they see men pray why and to whom they pray, and 
may be prepared to do the same understandingly when 
they reach the age of maturing reason. 

So far as concerns the methods of education, Kant is 
in substantial agreement with the essential principles 
of the educational reformers. Himself the veriest 
creature of routine, he seemingly agrees with Rousseau 
in discouraging the formation of habits that the pupil 
may be free from their tyranny; but the connection 
seems to show that this agreement is only apparent, 
and that Kant has in view only sensual indulgences. 

Again by a judicious definition of the difference in 
intention and spirit of work and play, he dissipates 
the oft-recurring notion of making learning a kind of 
play, which, when it means anything else than mak- 



286 THE HISTORY OF MODEEN EDUCATION. 

ing learning pleasant by adapting it to the capacity of 
pupils, and investing it with a living interest, is cer- 
tainly a pleasing delusion. 

Finally, by a sagacious question as to the correla- 
tion of the course of development of the individual 
with that of the human race in time, Kant gave the 
hint * which Herbert Spencer, ascribing its origin to 
Comte, has wrought up into an ingenious theory in 
his work on Education ; and which presents an in- 
teresting analogy with Agassiz's generalization that 
the embryological, i. e., physical development of the 
individual corresponds with the course of develop- 
ment in time of the class to which it belongs. 

The pedagogical treatises of these three eminent 
men, not only represent the best educational thought 
of the ISth century, but are types of very unlike 
kinds of ability. Rollin, calm and judicious, system- 
atic and practical, illumines with the clear light of 
pedagogic insight every educational problem that he 
treats, and might safely be placed in the hands of a 
young teacher as a reliable guide. The brilliant and 
versatile but erratic Rousseau dazzles and bewilders, 
quite as often as he instructs those whom his eloquence 
attracts ; but far more than either of the others he 
inspires men to strive for the improvement of society 
by a more rational training of the young. The pro- 
found intellect of Kant displays its power, not in 
any systematic treatment of education, but in the es- 
tablishment of great fundamental points of view, and 

* Kant, Samtliche Werke, Vol. IX. p. 375. 



IMPORTANT EDUCATIONAL TEEATISES. 287 

in striking suggestions which he left to others to 
elaborate. They are remarkable educational repre- 
sentatives of a striving but unsettled age, of which 
Kant voices the aspirations, Rousseau typifies the 
tumult of effort, and Rollin represents the purpose to 
achieve the practical. 



CHAPTEE XII. 

TI. BASEDOW AND THE PIIILANTHKOPINIC EX- 
PERIMENT. 

Basedow who, with his coadjutors Campe and 
Salzmann, became famous through his educational 
experiment in the Philanthropinum at Dessau, was 
born the son of a wigmaker in Hamburg, in 1723, 
and diedin 1Y90. His father was a stern man who 
seems to have seen no signs of promise in his son 
until he had run away and attached himself to a gen- 
tleman in a distant place. This man soon discovered 
that the runaway was a lad of quite unusual ability. 
Hence the father, first seeing his son ario-ht throuo:h 

■ o too 

another's eyes, persuaded the bo}" to return, and put 
him to school at a gymnasium. Here he earned 
small sums of money by writing poetry and tutoring 
other boys, and spent it in dissipation, presumably of 
a mild type. 

Later he went to the university of Leipsic to study 
theology with the purpose of becoming a clergyman. 
He however attended but few lectures, studying by 
himself instead, in a desultory and unordered fashion, 
and reading philosophic treatises from which he 
picked up a choice stock of heterodox opinions that 
barred him out from his destined profession, and col- 
ored all his later efforts and fortunes. Next he 
became tutor in a family where he showed his peda- 

(288) 



THE PHILANTHEOPINIC EXPERIMENT. 289 

gogic instinct by devising a method of teaching 
Latin whicli later he published, and by which he 
taught first himself and then his pupil. At the age of 
thirty he became professor in an academy for noble 
youths, but gave such offense to the patrons of the 
institution by a heterodox treatise, as caused his trans- 
fer to the gymnasium at Altona. Here, too, untaught 
l)y experience, he published other heterodox and con- 
troversial pamphlets which put him and his family 
under a social ban, and caused them to be excluded 
from the communion to the great distress of his wife. 
In 1Y68, he published a treatise on Schools and 
Studies, and at about the same time, an announce- 
n;ent of an elementary book of human knowledge, 
for whose publication he appealed for money to kings 
and princes. The money was obtained and the book 
appeared, preceded by a Method Book for fathers and 
teachers. The Elementary Book was a kind of ISth 
century Orbis Pictus, illustrated by a hundred engrav- 
ings, some of them astonishing in the matters depicted, 
and was intended to teach children nature, morals, 
natural unsectarian religion, the duties of citizens 
and business affairs, without weariness by appealing 
to sense experiences. In lYTO, with the aid of an 
assistant, Wolke, he began an educational experiment 
on his infant daughter Emilie, apparently as a test of 
Kousseau's theories. Of this child Wolke is claimed 
to have made an infant prodigy who, at the age of 
five years, besides having an unusual knowledge of 
things, gained through the senses, was able to speak 



290 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDrCATION. 

German, French and Latin, knew God as a father, 
and was fond of domestic duties. She seems to have 
played a considerable part as an example of what 
right methods of education were supposed to be able 
to accomplish. 

It should be noted, however, that in the Method 
Book, Basedow in some respects departs widely from 
Rousseau's vagaries, especially in regard to the time 
when religious and intellectual education should begin, 
and in insisting that it is best that the child should be 
educated among children. He wisely says, " Are not 
the mutual duties of those who have like rights, those 
in which we need a manifold practice ? But can a child 
that is brought up in solitude without playmates be 
practised in these duties by his tutor in any possible 
way ? " 

In 1771 the prince of Anhalt-Dessau invited Base- 
dow to Dessau, where with the aid of this prince and 
large contributions of money from other high quar- 
ters, in 1774 he founded his Philanthropinum, an 
institution in which an experiment was to be made 
for a thorough reform of the methods of education 
on the lines laid down by Comenius, Locke, and 
Rousseau. Although its name would claim for it a 
purpose to benefit mankind, it was in reality a board- 
ing school for the rich, so that Dittes derisively calls 
Basedow's projects "the pedagogy of the boarding 
school." 

In 1776, to advertise the Philanthropinum more 
widely and to obtain more money for his projects, he 



THE PHILANTHROPINIC EXPERIMENT. 291 

sent out an " Invitation " to an examination to be held 
in May, in which the results of their teaching should 
be shown. In this " Invitation," he declares it to be 
his aim in education " to form a cosmopolite whose 
life shall be as harmless, as devoted to the public 
good, and as contented, as it can be shaped by edu- 
cation .... The art of all arts is virtue and content- 
ment." Pie promises a colorless religion that will be 
equally acceptable to all. Latin, French, and German, 
mathematics, and a knowledge of nature and art are 
to be thoroughly taught with very little memorizing ; 
and double as much progress in studies as is usual, is 
promised by an unforced study, through harmony 
with the philanthropinic training and mode of life ; 
while much culture of sound reason is to be gained 
by the practice of a truly philosophic mode of 
thinking. 

He undertakes to teach children to understand and 
read a language in six months, and to make them 
fair scholars in it in a year, and he declares that he 
has already done it, — alluding probably to Emilie. 
He also says that " he has devised methods to make 
the work of learning three times as brief and three 
times as easy and pleasant as usual. All sciences, 
through uniformity of text-books, are to be put into 
such relations that one part shall always shorten and 
lighten another; and only that which is for the com- 
mon good is to be taught out of each science." 
Yerily we seem to hear the voice of Ratich, addressing 
us after a sleep of a century and a half ! And yet 



292 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

Basedow, unlike Ratich. is not merely feeding us 
with vague promises and proposals, but is giving too 
sanguine accounts of an experiment already in prog- 
ress, and mistaking fervent hopes for present accom- 
plishments. 

The proposed examination was held ; many noted 
persons resorted to it from different quarters ; favor- 
able reports of its results were published ; and the 
next year Kant wrote an eulogistic article on the 
Philanthropinum calling for a revolution in education 
in place of a reform, and predicting that the Philan- 
thropinum would teach and inspire teachers, and thus 
" be like seed corn." The rectors of gymnasien how- 
ever opposed, and Herder, then at the height of his 
fame, likened the projects of Basedow to an attempt 
to raise a forest of oaks in ten years, by cutting out 
their main roots, and declared " he would not entrust 
to him calves to educate, not to speak of men." 

Yet despite this opposition, the experiment seemed 
on the high road to an assured success. Neuendorf, 
the overseer of the school, strove like Trotzendorf to 
make it a little republic in which the pupils should 
make their own laws and feel their need of them ; 
manual labor was introduced, following the idea of 
Rousseau ; the numbers increased, and in 17S2 there 
were fifty-three pupils from all parts of Europe. 
Other schools sprang up in imitation of it, of which 
one, founded in 17S-i by Salzmann at Schnepfenthal 
in Gotha, still exists. And yet, before the end of the 
century, not only the original Philanthropinum had 



THE PHILANTHROPINIC EXPERIMENT. 293 

become extinct, but also all its imitators save the 
school at Schnepfenthal. 

The cause of its rapid decline may doubtless be 
traced rather to grave defects in the character and 
claims of its projector, than to any lack of worth in 
the objects that were sought to be attained, or to any 
lack of necessity that efforts should be made for their 
attainment. The object that was sought was a radical 
change, or as Kant phrased it, a revolution in the 
current methods, purposes, and adjuncts of education. 
And that a radical change was necessary is evident 
both from the testimony of Kant, and from the de- 
scription which Yon Kaumer gives as holding good 
for the education of the times with but few shining 
exceptions. 

It was an educational system in which grammar and 
barren memory played a chief part ; in which eyes 
were used only for reading and writing, and ears only 
to listen to the dull routine lessons and coarse tirades 
of schoolmasters ; in which school rooms were dis- 
mally gloomy, and punishments frequent and savagely 
severe ; and in which youth, hampered and tricked 
out in ornamental clothing, with hair elaborately 
dressed and smeared with pomade, and with daggers 
at their sides, were driven through a joyless round of 
nncomprehended studies, All this Basedow in the 
Philanthropinum undertook to change, and thus to 
set an example to all Europe of the direction that 
education, following the precepts of Comenius and 
Rousseau, should henceforth take in care for body, 
mind, and soul. 



294 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

In his methods there are doubtless many absurdi- 
ties and much that is overstrained. This is espec- 
ially true of some things introduced in moral education, 
and of the instruction in '' natural religion," in regard 
to which he was what we should now call a cranky 
and into which he introduced an elaborate and silly 
ceremonial. There was also a lack of frankness bor- 
dering on charlatanry in his treatment of Latin. He 
believed in teaching only useful things, and he 
thought Latin had wholly ceased to be useful ; yet 
avowedly for financial reasons, he made Latin very 
prominent in his school, thus publicly fostering while 
privately contemning it. Had he shown the same 
worldly wisdom and spirit of adaptation in other re- 
spects, in conforming his purposes and methods some- 
what to the exigencies of the times, the Philanthropi- 
num might have had a different and more-enduring 
history. 

Yet, though this immediate experiment failed, it 
was far from coming to naught. An influence went 
out from it which spread through Germany, and was 
not without effect in other parts of Europe. Many 
books were written disseminating its ideas, one of 
which, " The Swiss Family Kobinson " written by 
Campe, is still a favorite with the young. The atten- 
tion of men was called to the folly and uselessness of 
many things that prevailed in the schools ; the real 
merits of the philanthropinic ideas worked their way 
into education through men who avoided their defects ; 
*' peculiar pedagogic thoughts and views were called 



THE PHILANTHROPINIC EXPERIMENT. 295 

forth in men by so great a pedagogic reform " ; and 
minds were made receptive for the efforts of Pesta- 
lozzi, with whom began the educational revolution 
for which Kant longed. Indeed Basedow's bold, 
confident, and assertive spirit had gained such hold 
on the minds of men, that even when discredited by 
disaster, it left them in an expectant attitude with 
regard to education wholly favorable to any future 
reformer. Thus his experiment was a success, even 
in its failure. 

The character of Basedow has been alluded to as 
the undoubted cause of the brief life of the school 
he founded. Although his ability and his eloquence 
were remarkable, yet his character was marred by 
defects which unfitted him for a leader in an educa- 
tional enterprise. His skeptical and disputatious 
though evidently religious spirit, betrayed him on the 
most important occasions into a strange lack of world- 
ly prudence. The young Goethe, who in 1774 was his 
travelling companion, gives some curious illustrations 
of this and other traits of his character. On a tour 
whose object was to obtain money from the benevo- 
lent, and in which success depended on the favorable 
impression he should make, he continually affronted 
people, and closed their purses with their hearts by 
uncalled-for ventilation of his skeptical ideas about 
the Trinity. 

He was fond of teasing people by running counter 
to their tastes. Thus seeing Goethe's dislike for the 
vile tobacco that he smoked, and the viler-smelling 



2^6 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

tinder with wliicli he often relighted it, he took 
special pleasure in filling their room with the nauseous 
fumes. This same trait reveals a coarseness of nature 
which marks also some of his works on school sub- 
jects, showing a lack of delicacy which was little 
fitted for success in a great educational experiment 
involving striking innovations, whose acceptance de- 
manded the utmost fineness of touch and refinement 
of feeling, — such as we have remarked in Fenelon. 

Even more injurious than all else to the fortunes of 
his school was his over-sanguine disposition, which 
betrayed him into describing ideas that he had con- 
ceived as though they were things already accom- 
plished. Examples of this have already been given 
in speaking of his " Invitation." By his bold asser- 
tions, extravagant expectations were excited ^ and 
when these were not realized, a disappointed public 
was little disposed to believe that the institution had 
any real merit whatever. 

The career of Basedow, like that of Ratich, affords 
a striking example of how completely the personality 
of the educator, especially when he undertakes the 
role of a reformer, colors all his work and brings 
with it success or failure to his efforts. He who must 
in some respects run counter to the prejudices and 
habitudes of men, has need of the most consummate 
prudence and tact, — prudence that he may rouse no 
needless opposition, and tact that he may win men to 
cooperation by so presenting new ideas that they may 
seem like the embodiment of the vague aspirations of 



THE PHILANTHROPINIC EXPERIMENT. 297 

his hearers, — that thus, while he is really accomplish- 
ing his own purposes they may seem to be accom- 
plishing theirs. !N"ot only was Basedow singularly 
lacking in these two qualities, so essential to the 
successful reformer, but also others of his personal 
characteristics contributed to the failure of his well- 
meant efforts. In the career of Pestalozzi, we shall 
see an illustration in an opposite sense of the influ- 
ence of the educator's personality, — in a life of suc- 
cessive failures caused by peculiar defects, yet 
crowned with enduring renown by virtue of great and 
uncommon excellences of character. 

In conclusion it may be said that the ideas which 
Basedow especially emphasized in his experiment, 
present few or no novelties to one familiar with pre- 
vious educational history. The idea of following 
nature in all things, religion included ; of appealing 
in all possible cases to direct observation ; of giving^ 
careful training to the body, and to the physical capa- 
bilities, by manual work, and by dress permitting free 
movement ; of teaching only useful things ; of educat- 
ing the intellect that the feelings may gain right 
direction ; and of guiding the young by love instead 
of by blows, — are each and all recognizable as the 
common property of several Innovators ; but what 
they held as theory, he endeavored to exemplify in 
practice. The value of his idea of training the young 
to be cosmopolitan rather than patriotic may well be 
doubted ; and his effort to inculcate a mere colorless 
religion, bearing no sectarian tint, however laudable 



298 THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

may have been its purpose, was not merely puerile in 
its method, but was strongly though unconsciously 
tinged by his own peculiar heterodox views. 

The influence exerted by this experiment, in an 
age of so high-wrought expectations, was doubtless 
great, even though it failed ; and Pestalozzi was the 
inheritor of the results of that influence. 



CHAPTER XIIL 

YII. PESTALOZZI AND HIS WORK. 

The career of Pestalozzi is one peculiarly difficult 
to understand. The anomaly of enduring success 
amidst continuous failures is apt to strike the observer 
as a puzzle that hardly admits a rational solution. 
The explanation which Dr. Dittes essays to give of 
this curious phenomenon, is therefore worth quoting 
as that of one of the foremost among German educa- 
tors, and of one who strikes the key-notes of Pesta- 
lozzi's character with intelligent sympathy. It is as 
follows : " The most influential of all German peda- 
gogues has been a man who, neither through general 
culture, nor through clearness of pedagogic insight, 
nor through mastery of method, nor through talent 
for organization and direction, nor finally through 
enduring creations, towered above his great prede- 
cesssors and contemporaries, or even reached their 
level. On the contrary, in all these respects he 
remained far behind other educators. "What made 
liim great was his inexhaustable love for the people, 
liis pure heart, his glowing enthusiasm, his restless 
efforts and sacrifices for human welfare through 
liuman culture, and this too at a time which had 
finally gained a sense for educational ideals, and 

(299) 



300 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

hence elevated the promoter of such ideals to undying- 
renown." 

That is to say, through the efforts of men like 
Rousseau and Basedow, the times were ripe for 
educational reform ; and the unselfish love and fiery 
enthusiasm of Pestalozzi fitted him to express the 
needs of the times and to enforce their remedy, despite 
his lack in most of those qualities which are usually 
thought essential to make up the successful teacher. 
A review of the career of Pestalozzi will, I think,, 
convince us that Dittes' solution of the enigma of 
Festalozzi's fame and enduring influence, is probably 
as satisfactory as any that can be offered. 

John Henry Pestalozzi was born January, 1746 in 
Zurich where his father was a respectable physician. 
He had the misfortune when only five years old to 
lose his father, of whose masculine influence a boy so 
peculiarly constituted as he, stood in special need.. 
Under the care of his mother and of a faithful maid, 
he grew up a clumsy and awkward, yet withal good- 
natured and obliging lad, whom his school-fellows 
nicknamed Harry Oddity von Foolville. He passed, 
seemingly with average credit, through the various 
grades of the Zurich schools ; showed himself quick to 
grasp ideas, but very careless about the forms in which 
he embodied them ; received through one of his 
teachers, Bodmer by name, a strong bent to natural 
history, and towards caring for the happiness and 
freedom of the people; and was powerfully stimu- 
lated by reading Emile which just then was published. 



PESTALOZZI AND HIS WORK. 301 

The educational views of this book doubtless impressed 
him the more from their strong contrast with what 
he was experiencing ; whilst its political ideas kindled 
in the heart of the boy, already disposed to the love 
of liberty by the teaching of Bodmer, a hatred of the 
aristocracy which was never wholly quenched. 

He was destined for the ministry, but is said to 
have failed completely in his first attempts to preach. 
It was unfortunate for his earthly happiness that he 
permitted himself to be discouraged by these early 
failures ; for those who observe the touching and 
persuasive eloquence of his later addresses, and the 
impassioned fervor which glows in many passages of 
his educational works, cannot fail to be convinced 
that his peculiar abilities would have found their 
fittest place in the church. The church, however, 
lost one who would have proved a burning and shin- 
ing light, and he turned to the law. This profession 
did not harmonize with his ardent love for his fellow 
men ; hence in his twenty-second year, he abandoned 
literary ideas altogether, bought an unpromising tract 
of land, built a house which he called Neuhof, and 
betook himself to the cultivation of madder. 

Here in 1769 he married Anna Schulthess who 
brought him a considerable fortune, and with whom 
he lived nearly fifty years in most harmonious union. 
The letter in which he declared to Anna his senti- 
ments and wishes, and which is quoted in some of his 
biographies, is remarkable for the frankness with 
which it discloses all his faults and weaknesses, of 



302 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

which he was fnlly conscious, as also his aspirations 
for the future, from which he looked for a troubled 
life. These anticipated troubles came early to the 
young couple; for the madder enterprise proved a 
costly failure, wholly, as Pestalozzi confesses, through 
his own lack of Business capacity. Then in 1775 he 
converted his home into an industrial school for poor 
children, who were expected to pay for their support 
by field labors and spinning and weaving, while 
receiving school instruction at stated hours. 

From the outset this undertaking met with diffi- 
culties, from the lack of skill and docility of the 
pupils, from the stupid interference of parents who 
freqivently removed their children as soon as they 
were decently clothed and became useful, but most 
of all from "the lack of solid knowledge of fabrics, 
men, and business " on the part of its manager. The 
school finally went to pieces in 1780, and left Pesta- 
lozzi impoverished and deprived of confidence in 
himself, but with a better knowledge of the class 
which he desired to benefit, and for which his benev- 
olent feelings suffered no abatement. 

In the eighteen years which followed at Neuhof, 
years often of great privation, Pestalozzi laid the foun- 
dation of his reputation as a writer on education by the 
publication of two works which contain the funda- 
mental ideas of all his later efforts. One of these, 
" Leonard and Gertrude," which appeared in 1781, is 
by far the most widely known of all his works. In 
the form of a homely but touching story of the life in 



PESTALOZZI AND HIS WORK. 303 

a Swiss village, in which Gertrude acts the part of the 
good angel, it was intended, in the words of its 
author, " to promote a better education of the people 
by setting out from their real situation and their 
natural relations." " It was," as he says in the preface 
to a second edition published in 1803, "my first word 
to the heart of the poor and forsaken in the land, my 
first word to the mothers of the land and to the heart 
which God gave them to be to their children what no 
man on earth can be in their stead." It was the first 
expression of an idea which he never abandoned dur- 
ing his long life, to place the first education of child- 
ren in the hands of mothers, and to so methodize and 
even mechanize instruction as to render this possible. 
This, which was also the idea of Comenius, was the 
fruitful germ from which much later sprang the 
practicable scheme of Froebel, the kindergarten. 

This work attracted great attention, and roused 
among his friends the hope that he might be a suc- 
cessful novelist. This, however, was not the kind of 
success that Pestalozzi craved ; and the next year, 
seeing that the interest of his story had withdrawn 
attention from the educational ideas he wished to 
impress, he wrote " Christopher and Alice " to accent 
them more fully. This book gained little notice, and 
probably failed entirely to reach the class he had 
chiefly in view. Daring the succeeding years which 
cover a period of wars and tumults for Europe, most 
of his writings were of a political and ephemeral 
character, yet with a thread of appeal for better popu- 
lar education running through many of them. 



804 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

In 1798, the idea occurred to the government 
officials, on account of his incessant political activity, 
that he probably wanted some office to keep him quiet ; 
but to their surprise, when asked what post he would 
accept, Pestalozzi answered, " I wish to be a school- 
master." He was taken at his word, and in Septem- 
ber, 1798 he was sent to Stanz to collect and care for 
the poor children who had been orphaned and made 
homeless by the war. Here then at the age of fifty- 
two, and with no pedagogic experience save the luck- 
less industrial undertaking at Neuhof, Pestalozzi 
entered on his illustrious educational career. 

He soon collected in a deserted convent, which was 
given up to his use, eighty homeless children. Igno- 
rant and neglected, ragged and filthy, brutalized by 
extreme want, and afflicted with various nameless ills, 
they were unpromising subjects for an effort at adapt- 
ing the conditions of home life to the needs of num- 
"bers assembled in a school, such as Pestalozzi had in 
view. " A person who had the use of his eyes," he 
says, " would not have ventured it ; fortunately I was 
blind, otherwise I should not have ventured it." 

Here then with only the aid of a housekeeper, he 
entered on his task. The children were taught and 
cared for only by him. He slept in their midst; he 
performed for them the most menial services ; he 
prayed with them, and strove to nourish in their hearts 
the germs of good principles : he combined manual 
labor with instruction that they might become able to 
support themselves. Forced by the necessity of the 



PESTALOZZI AND HIS WORK. 305 

situation, he devised the plan of concert recitation 
and a system of monitorial teaching, in which the 
few who were able to read were set to teach those 
more ignorant. 

His unselfish labors for these desolate children 
were meeting with unlooked-for success, when the 
return of the French army in June, 1799, scattered 
the pupils, and their overtasked teacher gained a brief 
period of rest. Later in the same year, he was per- 
mitted to teach in the primary schools of Burgdorf, a 
town of some importance in the canton of Bern. 
Here he continued his experiments in elementary 
instruction, encountering some opposition, partly relig- 
ious, and partly envious. He says, " It was whispered 
that I myself could not write, nor work accounts, nor 
even read properly. Popular reports are not always 
wholly destitute of truth ; it is true that I could not 
write, nor read, nor work accounts well." What was 
there then in him to fit him for his work ? Ramsauer, 
one of his pupils at this time, and afterwards a teacher 
of some note, speaks of " his sacred zeal, his devoted 
love which caused him to be entirely unmindful of 
himself, which struck even the children, made the 
deepest impression on me and knit my childlike and 
grateful heart to his forever." 

After less than a year of this teaching, he opened a 
school in Burgdorf in conjunction with Krusi and 
others, which was the germ of the famous Pestaloz- 
zian Institution. In 1805, this school was removed to 
Yverdun, and soon gained a European reputation. 



306 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

Pupils flocked to it from various nationalities ; ardent 
students resorted thither to learn the secret of its 
methods ; and its fame attracted many distinguished 
visitors. In 1809, von Raumer, the future historian 
of education, spent some months in the school with a 
ft'iend, and his account of it is therefore an inside 
view, evidently candid but not highly eulogistic. At 
that time there were 165 pupils, of whom less than 
half were Swiss, the rest being German, French, 
Russian, Italian, Spanish, and even American. There 
were besides thirty-two persons in the institution to 
learn its methods. 

But though the school was famous and apparently 
flourishing, the seeds of discord were early sown, 
which should ultimately bring disaster. For a time 
the self-sacrificing spirit, the unselfish zeal for human 
improvement, and the untiring devotion to duty of 
its director, inspired in his associates kindred senti- 
ments, and united them all in harmonious efforts for 
the great cause in-which they were engaged. But as 
the numbers increased, and new elements were intro- 
duced into the school, the effects of Pestalozzi's "un- 
rivalled incapacity for government " and management 
began to make themselves felt. A strong hand was 
needed to guide a large establishment, and unhappily 
the man on whom the director relied for the strength 
which he knew he himself lacked, seems not to have 
been gifted with conciliatory manners. Hence dis- 
affection and discord arose, and invaluable teachers 
were lost. 



PESTALOZZI AND HIS WORK. 307 

Again, Pestalozzi's eager desire that the results of 
the teaching should be shown at their best to the 
many distinguished visitors, that thereby his purpose 
in the spread of better methods of instruction might 
be promoted, insensibly led to an undue attention to. 
those branches which could most easily be exhibited 
to visitors ; whereby those moral and religious charac- 
teristics which mature only in silence, were measure- 
ably less emphasized, and the education became 
one-sided. From this cause also heart-burnings arose 
among the teachers, since it was easily seen that those 
among them were most favored whose work would 
make the most impressive display. 

Pestalozzi struggled long against these tendencies, 
but in vain. The evils springing from the limitation& 
of his own nature, were too strong to be overpowered 
by his unselfishness and his unfailing love. The in- 
stitution declined, and was finally closed in 1825, 
after an existence of about twenty years. The old 
man, already verging on his eightieth year, retired to 
his old home at Neuhof where his only grandson 
resided ; and there, after writing his last two works, 
one of which bears the pathetic title " The Song of 
the Dying Swan," he died in February, 1827, having 
just completed his 81st year. 

So much has needed to be said on the incidents of 
his life, even in a brief sketch, because his life and 
character are so intimately intertwined with his edu- 
cational efforts, that the influence which the latter 
have exerted can hardly be understood apart from the 



308 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

former. He taught and influeDced even more by 
what he was and what he desired than by what he 
did ; for, from his want of disciplined skill, and from 
the peculiar enthusiastic eagerness and lack of fore- 
sight which marked his nature, his practice often 
stands in the most imperfect relations with his theories 
and his real purposes. 

Witness, for example, his frequent violations, both 
in his teaching and in some of his method books, of 
his own fundamental principle, of proceeding in all 
possible cases from the observation of things, and 
using language only to express ideas already con- 
ceived. His so-called object lessons are often mere 
lists of names of things by no means present, accom- 
panied by other lists of properties by no means observed. 
It might be said that they were intended as guides only 
for the subjects to be selected by teachers ; but von 
Haumer's observations show that these compends were 
not so used in Yverdun. We are not therefore to expect 
from Pestalozzi that conformity of his practice to his 
principles which is common with less eager and more 
self-contained natures. He is to be judged rather by 
his spirit and his purposes than by what he did. 

The great purpose of Pestalozzi's efforts was " to 
reform educational methods in the interest of the poor 
and oppressed." To this he was prompted by an 
unwavering love of man and compassion for his often- 
wretched condition. This purpose and this love 
inspire all his works, and illuminate all his acts, so 
far as his acts could express his deepest convictions. 



PESTALOZZI AND HIS WORK. 30^ 

They appear even more clearly in his industrial school 
at Neuhof, his orphan school at Stanz, his home school 
at Burgdorf, his institution at Yverdun, and his eager- 
ness when feeble with age to found a poor school at 
y verduiT, than in works like " Leonard and Gertrude/^ 
or" Christopher and Alice," or How Gertrude Teaches 
her Children." 

To so reform methods of instruction that the element- 
ary teaching might be done at home by the mothers, 
was a favorite idea of his during his entire life ; and 
in order that persons wholly untrained, as most 
mothers are, might use his methods with success, he 
strove so to simplify and even to mechanize them, a& 
to make their results depend rather on the nature of 
the processes than on the skill of the teachers. He 
did not even resent the charge of mechanizing method. 
On the contrary, once in the Burgdorf days, when an 
ofl&cer of the canton accused him of desiring to make 
instruction mechanical, Pestalozzi said " He hit the 
nail on the head, and supplied me with the very 
expression that indicated the object of my endeavors." 

That this was no mere chance expression, but 
rather the statement of a settled purpose, is shown by 
the objection made by von Raumer to the procedure 
he had witnessed at Yverdun. He says " The com- 
pendiums were to render all peculiar talent and skill 
in teaching as good as unnecessary. These methodical 
compends were like machines which unfortunately 
could not quite perform their office without human 
aid, as for instance, however perfect the printing 



310 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

press, it must always be tended by a man who really 
needs hardly the most common human reason for his 
duties. Pestalozzi's idea of a teacher was not much 
better than this : according to his views, such an one 
had nothing to do but to take his pupils thix)ugh the 
compend with pedantic accuracy, according to the 
directions for its use, without adding thereto or dimin- 
ishing therefrom." 

This was certainly a low view of the teacher's 
functions, and is one to which the disciples of Pesta- 
lozzi at the present day would be unwilling to subscribe. 
It is especially strange that one who like Pestalozzi 
was engaged in a crusade against the dead mechanism 
of the schools of his time, should have seriously pro- 
posed to substitute for it another kind of mechanism, 
— the mechanism of an unvarying method. The 
erroneous course of thought by which he was led to 
make so serious a departure in his practice from the 
principles which he enforces so often and so well in 
his works, was probably something like the following : 
— He saw clearly that many of the worst evils of his 
time grew out of the neglect of popular education 
and the ignorance thence resulting : his ardent love 
for the people which was his most prominent and 
characteristic motive, impelled him to remedy these 
evils by striking at their source in popular ignorance : 
but he was firmly persuaded that the only effectual 
remedy lay in remitting the elementary instruction to 
mothers in the home : hence to carry out this imprac- 
ticable plan with persons unskilled in teaching, he 



PESTALOZZI AND HIS WOKK. 311 

attempted to devise methods whose results should 
depend not on skill but on processes. Could his effort 
have succeeded, and such methods have been intro- 
duced into every wretched home, it does not seem 
probable that the evils at which he aimed would have 
been remedied ; for mere mechanical processes can 
never promote intelligence or moral thoughtfulness, 
without which the worst fruits of ignorance remain 
untouched. 

A favorite idea of Pestalozzi's, which is strongly 
emphasized by some of his modern followers, was that 
all elementary instruction should be related to num- 
ber, form and words, — number leading to arithmetic, 
form to drawing and writing, form and number to 
geometry, and words to the right use of language as 
the embodiment of ideas. 

Yon Raumer criticises these categories as referring 
too exclusively to sight, and hence seemingly exclud- 
ing many sensible properties of objects which, though 
embodied in language, cannot properly be considered 
under either number or form ; and thus, as he thinks, 
they run counter to Pestalozzi's most fundamental 
principle, that the basis of all instruction and especially 
of elementary instruction, should be laid on observa- 
tion and the proper use of the senses. Doubtless this 
idea from its simplicity fascinated its author, and 
prompted a spirit so little circumspect as his to push 
its application too far; yet when we consider how 
absorbing a part sights and word-sounds play in the 
sense experiences of the young, and that the really 



312 THE HISTOKY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

important phenomena which cannot readily be num- 
bered or reduced to form, can at least be recognized 
by name as experiences of sense, it is obvious that 
Pestalozzi's idea may easily be so applied as to be 
helpful in elementary teaching. 

His biographer, De Guimps, who was one of Pesta- 
lozzi's pupils, tells us that his most philosophic coad- 
jutor, ISTiederer, made these three things the essence 
of his method, viz. Aim, Starting-Point and Con- 
nection. His aim was the development of the entire 
man through the fise of his powers. The starting- 
point was to be in the child's tastes, and his ideas 
gained by previous experience. By connection was 
meant that exercises should be duly graduated to the 
powers of pupils, and so arranged that every exercise 
should grow out of the last and prepare for the next. 

In conclusion let us enumerate what may fairly be 
considered the essential features of Pestalozzi's educa- 
tional scheme. These are as follows ; 

(1) To develop the child and to form his mind 
through his own personal activity, rather than to 
attempt to furnish him with useful knowledge. 

(2) To base all instruction on intuition, i. e., obser- 
vation and experience, and to connect intimately with 
this the correct use of language, that the child may 
clearly express what he clearly conceives. Pestalozzi 
justly thought that his greatest service to education 
consisted in making the proper . use of the senses 
effective as the basis of all good teaching, and in con- 
necting this with the due use of language ; and if any 



PESTALOZZI AND HIS WORK. 313 

one thing were to be named as the distinctive charac- 
ter of Pestalozzianism at the present day, it would 
doubtless be this. 

(3) To furnish the pupil's mind with clear funda- 
mental notions, or " mother ideas " as a preparation 
for all the more advanced work, as for example in 
geometry, geography, and most other studies. 

(4) To popularize science by an objective presenta- 
tion of its truths ; in regard to which it may be said 
that in making science-teaching objective, more has 
been effected than merely to make it popular ; it has 
become deeper and more fruitful ; and in the form of 
laboratory study, its essential corollary, it is leading- 
to a rapid extension of man's knowledge of nature. 

(5) To conform the order of instruction to nature 
and common sense by beginning witli that which is 
within the range of the pupil's experience, advanc- 
ing from this gradually, keeping pace with his pro- 
gressive development, and dwelling so long and so 
repeatedly on each step that he may be sure to master- 
it thoroughly. In the application of this principle^- 
Pestalozzi pushed so far the idea of beginning with 
the near^ as to propose that object lessons should^ 
begin with the child's own body, evidently confound- 
ing the physically near with that which is nearest in 
the order of apprehension. He was wiser in recom- 
mending that religious education should set out from, 
the child's love for the mother, and that this love 
should then be directed to God as the parent of all. 

(6) To join practical skill with theoretic knowledge 



314 THE HISTORY OF MODKBN EDUCATION. 

by associating manual with mental labor, thus insur- 
ing the habitual cooperation of mind and heart with 
hand. It is only within recent years that educators 
have become alive to the importance and possible 
value of this idea in education. The idea is, however, 
by no means original with Pestalozzi, as we have 
repeatedly seen. 

(7) To base the relation of teacher and child on love^ 
and to pay due respect to the child's individuality. 
This principle, as has been seen, was the chief source 
of Pestalozzi's power as a practical teacher, atoning 
:for many serious faults in both matter and manner, 
and achieving results whicli, as they are described, 
seem marvellous. DoubtJess the race of teachers has 
still much to learn about the power of this principle, 
the most difficult of all to apply in the management 
vof schools. 

(8) To make all education culminate in character, 
and to make character the standard by which the value 
of all educational processes is to be measured. 

(9) Above all to restore the home to what Pesta- 
lozzi conceived to be its proper place in education, 
and hence to make home instruction possible. This 
favorite idea of his has already been noticed, and its 
impracticability shown as a scheme for general element- 
.ary education. Yet he thought so highly of it, " that he 
wished to prove by actual experiment that those things 
in which domestic education possesses advantages, 
should be imitated in public education." His schools 
at Burgdorf and Yverdun were really an experiment 



PESTALOZZI AND HIS WORK. 315 

in this direction ; and that which distressed him most 
^t Yverdun was, that with the increase of numbers 
^nd the complexity necessarily resulting therefrom, 
the home spirit that prevailed at Burgdorf grew less 
and finally disappeared. 

Of all these principles, it is easy to see that little is 
absolutely new with Pestalozzi. Indeed it might be 
thought that most of his educational activity was 
merely an attempt to enforce and reduce to practice 
the best and wisest ideas of his predecessors. Such a 
supposition would, I think, be incorrect. In point of 
fact, fertile as he was in ideas and impulsive in 
action, he appears to have been wofully ignorant of 
what others had done or attempted in the same field 
of effort in which he was engaged. Hence not seldom, 
it is said, he toiled over discoveries that others had 
already made, or instituted experiments on what was 
already recognized as valueless or impracticable. 
Above all, he thus lacked the advantage which a 
spirit like his so much needed, of comparing his ideas 
and efforts with those of others. 

He once said that he had not read a book in thirty 
years. It would doubtless have been better and 
•easier for him if he had. No one man, however orig- 
inal, can be as wise as all men ; and he who permits 
himself to be shut out from the experience of his 
fellows, runs the risk of making many vain and many 
needless efforts. 

Men, who like Pestalozzi, toil unselfishly for their 
fellows, toil that coming generations may be spared 



316 THE HISTOKY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

some of the difficulties that they encountered ; and 
they have a right to expect that the records of their 
experience shall not be unheeded. To this end 
history is written, that men may glean wisdom from 
the experience of their predecessors ; and that Pesta- 
lozzi failed to do this, should be counted rather as a 
grave error than as a tribute to his originality. 

It was doubtless fortunate for the fame of Festalozzi, 
that the time of greatest eclat of his school at Yverdun 
coincided with the period of deepest humiliation of 
Germany under the conquering arms of Napoleon. 
In that hour of seemingly hopeless darkness, Fichte 
summoned the German people to a universal educa- 
tion of the coming generation to a new and nobler 
national consciousness, as the means of their future 
elevation, and pointed them to Pestalozzi for the 
principles on which such an education should be 
based. This advice was heeded ; and thus Pestalozzi 
became to Germany, and through Germany to the 
world, the representative of those principles which 
for two centuries a series of educational reformers 
from Ratich and Comenius down to Basedow, had 
with little effect proclaimed. The doctrines of the 
Innovators became henceforth the evangel of a new 
education ; and they were stamped indelibly with the 
name, not of Comenius, nor Rousseau but of Pestalozzi. 



CHAPTEE XIY. 

•GENERAL REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS IN THE 
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. 

In concluding this consideration of the educational 
■characteristics of the 18th century, it is essential 
briefly to review the course of school progress both 
higher and elementary in several leading European 
countries, and in America. In the course of this 
review, we shall have occasion to observe the growth 
in Germany of a movement for general elementary 
education, and of a conviction that such education to 
be effective cannot be left to local and spasmodic 
efforts, but must be made an affair of the State, which 
the State must plan, prescribe, supervise, and insure. 
We shall also see that before the close of the century 
the vernacular tongues have triumphed in the instruc- 
tion of both higher and lower schools, in all the 
leading European states, and that thus the essential 
condition of universal education has been secured ; 
and that Latin has been relegated to its proper place, 
as a subject of study by no means necessary, as once 
it had been, as the vehicle of all knowledge worth 
gaining, or as a medium of communication among 
men of culture, but yet vitally interesting if so pur- 
sued that we may become familiar with modes of life 
and thought with which, though now very remote in 

(317) 



318 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

point of time, we are still connected by close bistorie 
ties tbat cannot safely be severed. 

The provisions for education in England and Scot- 
land were much the same as were noted in the pre- 
ceding century. English secondary instruction carried 
on in the famous public schools, underwent no 
marked change in either matter or manner ; whilst 
elementary training, which was remitted wholly ta 
private efforts or to private benevolence, was provided 
for by tutors or in private schools, and rarely reached 
the poorer classes until the last decade of the century^ 

From the conflicting accounts given by the partisans 
of reaction and of the Revolution in France, we may 
infer that during this century France was well sup- 
plied with classical schools and colleges, since it is 
affirmed that there were about 600 colleges, besides 
about sixty higher faculties in forty academic centres. 
In these higher schools, which were mostly frequented 
by the more opulent classes, though occasionally low- 
born boys of extraordinary promise, like Moliere and 
Rollin, were found in them, the studies were domin- 
antly literary, and were directed quite as much to 
form as to substance. Yet the verbal repetition of 
lessons had been somewhat modified by the exposition 
of authors ; and the French language, already famous- 
in literature, had gained a foothold in instruction. 

The teaching body was mostly clerical, though the 
Jesuits, with their immobility of spirit, had so declined 
in influence that in 1764 the order was expelled from 
France, its place being taken by Oratorians, and other 



KEVIEAV OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. 319 

religious bodies. If this higher instruction be judged 
by the number of its schools, or by its most brilliant 
representative products, it would be ranked high ; but 
if, on the other hand, we could know what were its 
average and general results, our estimates of its worth 
would possibly be considerably modified. 

It is claimed by some persons that, although during 
this century no governmental care was given to general 
elementary education, still a large provision was made 
for the instruction of the humbler classes by various 
religious bodies, chiefly by the followers of La Salle. 
If we reflect that at the beginning of the Revolution 
the Christian Brothers numbered 1,000 teachers, 
enough at most for the instruction of 100,000 pupils, 
without deducting for the Brothers who were employed 
in secondary schools ; and if we add to these for the 
poor children occasionally instructed by other clerical 
persons as many more, — we may readily apprehend 
how scanty a provision this would be for a school 
population which in 1790 could not have been less 
than about three millions. 

When we farther learn that the schoolmaster, when 
not a priest, was also sexton, beadle, chorister, grave- 
digger, and bell-ringer ; that he was to attend on 
marriages, baptisms, and burials ; that his instructions 
were given not to classes but to individuals, class 
instruction being unknown save among the Christian 
Brothers ; and that his first duty was to teach the 
children their prayers and to lead them daily to 
church, any residue of time being devoted to teaching 



320 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

them to read, write and count, — we shall doubtless 
conclude that the humbler our estimate of the extent 
and depth of the elementary instruction given to the 
poor of France during the 18th century, the more 
likely it will be to correspond with the truth. 

Such was the condition of education in Austria 
during the first seventy years of this century that Dr. 
Dittes says that in 1773 but little more than half of 
the children in Vienna received any instruction, that 
in Lower Austria sixteen per cent, in Bohemia six 
per cent, and in Silesia four per cent only, attended 
any school, while in other provinces of the empire the 
state of education was still worse. But in 1774 
Maria Theresa, after her realm had somewhat recovered 
from the exhaustion of the wars in which she had 
been involved, entered vigorously on the work of 
organizing general education ; and during the short 
residue of her life she did a work for schools such as 
no crowned head had ever before dreamed of. At 
her death in 1780, there were already in Austria 6,200 
''German schools," among which were fifteen Normal 
schools and eighty-three High schools. 

For the prosecution of this work she called to her 
aid the justly famous John Ignacius von Felbiger. 
He had already approved himself a man fitted for the 
duties of minister of education in a period of active 
growth, by the remarkable work he had done in his 
Silesian diocese, in organizing and sustaining element- 
ary schools for the wretched inhabitants. Though a 
Catholic abbot, he had drawn his pedagogic inspira- 



REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL PKOGKESS. 321 

tion from a Pietistic source. He had privately visited 
Hecker in Berlin, had examined and approved the 
Real school, and teachers' seminary, had at his own 
expense sent promising young men to learn Hecker's 
methods, and had largely adopted his Realistic ideas, 
while engrafting the training of teachers on schools 
which should serve as models to surrounding districts. 
With his energetic aid the empress accomplished the 
great work that has been mentioned, organizing a 
system which included, besides elementary and higher 
schools, also schools for girls and several Normal 
Model schools. 

To Maria Theresa is due also the credit of recog- 
nizing and rewarding the merit of Ferdinand Kinder- 
mann, who in her Bohemian dominions had been active 
in organizing elementary schools for the poor, and 
who, to interest the people in them, added to the usual 
elementary subjects, instruction in various local indus- 
tries, thus earning the title of " Creator of Industrial 
schools." 

Although after the death of the empress, Felbiger 
was permitted to retire to an ecclesiastical position 
where he died in 1788, her immediate successors car- 
ried forward the educational work that she had begun, 
until near the close of the century, when a clerical 
reaction began under which the schools of Austria 
suffered greatly. 

No other country shows so marked educational 
advancement during the 18th century as Germany ; 
and this is especially true of secondary education. 



322 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

The movement of the Pietist Francke, with the wide- 
reaching and well-omened impulse that it gave to the 
training of teachers, to the founding of Real schools, 
and to the pursuit in larger measure of studies other 
than those of a purely literary character, was not only 
German in its origin, but during this century, expended 
its force chiefly on the schools of Germany. Like- 
wise Basedow's Philanthropinum, though it was 
attended with misfortune, doubtless did much good, 
both by attracting attention to practical studies and to 
novel ideas, and by promoting a more rational dress 
and regimen in the secondary schools, which were 
widely corrupted by senseless French fashions. 

To these changes, which were mostly in a realistic 
direction, was added during the century, in both 
gymnasien and universities, the very marked improve- 
ment in Humanistic studies, to which attention was 
directed in a previous chapter. Through the efforts 
of men like Gesner, Ernesti, Heyne, and F. A. Wolf, 
there arose in all the higher institutions a thoroughly 
enlightened Humanism, which, no longer contenting 
itself with the study of correct form and of grammat- 
ical minutise addressed to adhesive memory, strove 
by philological methods to assure a realization of the 
ideas, and modes of thinking and living presented by 
classical authors, and a hearty appreciation of their 
beauties. 

Thus Gesner, in recommending a style of classical 
study in which pupils with their whole soul and 
undivided attention fix their eyes on the author that 



REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL PROGKESS. 323^^ 

they read, striving only to understand him and to- 
enjoy his beauties, tells us that " when he read Terence 
with his boys in this manner, they sat with parted 
lips, hushed in breathless silence, their eyes, their 
ears, their thoughts intent, — smiling too, since their 
emotions were mirrored in their looks ; " but when, 
with the same boys, he read Euripides in the usual 
dragging piece-meal fashion, " they sat indeed with 
open mouths because they yawned, and silent because 
they dozed." ^ 

Through such a change in the spirit of Humanistie 
study as is here illustrated, as well as through the 
preparation of young men to teach in this spirit, which 
Gesner, Heyne, and Wolf cared for in their philologic 
seminaries, secondary instruction in Germany was 
very materially improved in this respect, and assumed 
its present form. 

Finally the movement to make German the medium 
of higher instruction became dominant in this century,, 
through its growing use in university lectures, in 
which Thomasius seems to have led the way, first in 
Leipsic and later in Halle : this was naturally followed 
by its use in the gymnasium, so that the despairing 
cry arose in many quarters that the world was surely 
relapsing into barbarism, since even from university 
chairs one might no longer hear any other language 
than German. Doubtless the growth during this age 
of a noble and truly national literature had much 
influence, here as elsewhere, in hastening the dis' 

* Von Raumer, Gesch, der Padagogik, Vol. II. p. 147. 



324 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

use of Latin as a spoken tongue, and thus indirectly 
prepared the way for universal education by the use 
of the vernacular. 

The improvement in the popular elementary schools 
during this century was not, however, commensurate 
with that in the higher institutions. During the last 
part of the I7th century and in the 18th, most if not 
all of the German states recognized elementary educa- 
tion for all children as a matter of state policy, and 
urgently pressed on the parishes the duty of providing 
it for all, — so urgently indeed in some cases that some 
have looked upon the decrees as the beginning of 
school compulsion ; but the duty, being left to local 
efforts, was largely neglected or else very carelessly 
performed. 

The peasant considered the schools a needless bur- 
den, and offered a stupid resistance to them ; the 
nobility dreaded the effects of any enlightenment on 
the lower classes, and hence were unfriendly to schools ; 
and the clergy to whom the oversight of schools was 
entrusted, were too often indifferent to their interests, 
•or even obstructed their progress. Hence little really 
effective work was done. In many regions there 
were no schools ; in more there were very poor ones. 
^School houses were often mere huts ; school appliances 
were very defective or wanting; and the country 
teachers, whom the Teachers' Seminaries had not yet 
reached, were still recruited from the failures in other 
vocations, and were an inefficient class " whose income 
was mean and whose social consequence was small." 



REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. 325 

This account, which is given bj Dr. Dittes, bears a 
striking resemblance to the descriptions given by 
credible witnesses of the schools in the United States- 
during the first decades of the present century. 

Prussia made the most noteworthy efforts of any of 
the German states for the advancement of general 
education. The father of Frederick the Great, penu- 
rious though he was and fond of tall soldiers, established 
a small school fund, founded about 1735 the first Prus- 
sian school for training teachers, with one of Francke's 
adherents at its head, and made efforts to enforce 
attendance in schools, but evidently with small suc- 
cess.* It is said that during his reign about 1,700 
elementary schools were established in his dominions^ 

It has already been stated that Frederick the Great 
early adopted Hecker's school for teachers as a state 
institution ; besides which he long made energetic 
efforts for the improvement of popular education, by 
establishing considerable school funds, and by vig- 
orous directions to tlu)se charged with the duty of 
supervising the schools. The small results of his- 
efforts, due to the lukewarmness or the opposition of 
the parishes, the clergy, and the church boards, so 
discouraged him, however, that in 1779 he determined 
that " Old soldiers who could read, write, and cipher, 
and were in other respects well fitted for schoolmasters- 
in the country should be employed." 

When, however, the efforts of governments had 
accomplished so little in lifting the load of popular 

* Schmidt, Gesch. der Padagogik Vol. III., p. 513. 



326 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

ignorance and unreasoning opposition, a school re- 
former arose in the ranks of the nobility, who, by 
his benevolent work upon his own estates, by the 
schools that he founded, by the elementary school and 
method books that he prepared, and by the influence 
that went forth from his generous exertions, justly 
won for himself the title of " Father of the Prussian 
Country Schools." This man was Friedrich Eberhard 
von Rochow, whose life extended from 1T34 to 1805^ 

The early years of his manhood were passed in the 
military service ; but the last forty-five years of his 
life he devoted to the improvement of his large 
•estates. He gives a vivid and pathetic account of the 
manner in which the misery of the peasantry, grow- 
ing out of their gross ignorance and consequent stupid 
obstinacy, was forced upon him in a period of pesti- 
lence, and of the resolution that then sprang up in his 
soul to remedy this evil by a general education practi- 
cally suited to their condition and their needs. It is 
sufficient for our purpose to say that, at his own 
expense, he established schools on his estates, trained 
teachers for their work, devised methods for their use 
suited to the intelligence of children sunk in heredi- 
tary ignorance, and even prepared school-books, which 
exerted a wide influence from the manner in which 
they appealed to the observing powers and brought 
into use rudimentary faculties of judgment and 
reasoning. 

By the example that he gave, of the manner in which 
the problem of general education for a large ignorant 



REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. 327 

population could be successfuly attacked, and of the 
kind of training needed by teachers for this special 
work, von Rochow closed the 18th century with the 
promise of a brighter day for the German elementary 
school, a promise which the 19th century has made a 
reality. 

In our own country the 18th century was marked, 
as is well known, by Indian raids, by French and 
Indian wars, and finally by the long struggle of the 
Revolution and of the subsequent reconstruction. 
Under such circumstances, it could hardly be expected 
that education would make any great advance. Aside 
from New England and to a very small extent in New 
York, education depended on private and benevolent 
efforts ; and everywhere, with but few honorable 
exceptions, the elementary teachers, even where not 
stained with vices, were men of but meagre knowl- 
edge and exceedingly narrow views, who opened 
schools for lack of other employment or as a stepping- 
stone to something more agreeable, and the meagre- 
ness of whose salaries was commensurate with their 
qualifications. 

In New England the legal requirements for general 
elementary education were continued, but the subjects 
attempted were few and the means used were humble. 
The staple were the so-called Three R's, reading, writ- 
ing, and reckoning ; but the sole reading-books were 
the Bible, the Psalter, and the limited exercises in the 
New England Primer and spelling books like Dil- 
worth's. Near the close of the century, these were 



328 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

supplemented by Webster's reader and long-used 
spelling book, and by Caleb Bingham's American 
Preceptor and Columbian Orator. At about the same 
time Pike's and Daboll's Arithmetics superseded Hod- 
der's which had been long in use. 

Geography and English Grammar were rarely 
touched. Morse's Geography and Bingham's Young 
Lady's Accidence, both, I think, the first American 
books on these subjects, were published in the last 
two decades of the century. The 1809 edition of 
Morse which is before me, contains but two maps, 
those of the world and of N. America ; and the preface 
to the first edition, 1789, shows that it was intended 
" as a reading book, that our youth of both sexes, at 
the same time that they are learning to read, might 
imbibe an acquaintance with their country and an 
attachment to its interests." 

Yet meagre as were the studies and appliances, and 
poor as were the teachers, the vigorous youth of those 
earlier days seem often to have made effective use of 
what they had. Reading matter was far from plenty, 
in the homes as in the schools, but the little that was 
at hand was perused to mastery, undiluted by a 
flood of trashy fiction ; the specimens of penmanship 
which exist in the copy books and ciphering books 
still preserved by old families, show that beautiful 
writing was not uncommon ; and the soundness of 
judgment and skill in affairs displayed by many men 
whose educational advantages had been limited to 
what was taught in the New England common schools, 



REVIEW OF EDUCATIONAL PROGRESS. 329 

testify to the thorough use that was made of what 
these schools had to offer. 

In New York during this century, I know of but 
three legislative provisions for education. The first 
of these, in 1702, at the instance of Governor Cornburyy 
established a free grammar school for seven years in 
New York city, and gave it a grant of £50 a year. 
The second, by an act passed in 1732, gave legislative 
aid for seven years to a public school in New York, 
in which should be taught Latin, Greek and mathe- 
matics, and which is claimed to have been the germ 
from which sprung King's college, now Columbia. 
The third, by an act passed in 1795 on the recommen- 
dation of Governor Clinton, appropriated $100,000 a 
year for five years for the encouragement of schools."^ 
South of New York, whatever elementary instruction 
was given was wholly a matter of private undertaking 
on the part of parents, societies, or would-be school- 
masters, save perhaps to a slight extent in New 
Jersey. 

More remarkable than the efforts for elementary 
education in those troubled times, were the provisions 
that were made for higher education ; for not less 
than twenty-two colleges had their origin in the 18th' 
century. Among these were such famous institutions 
as Yale, which began in 1701 as a collegiate school at 
Saybrook, and was without settled home until 1716' 
when it was fixed in New Haven ; the college of New 
Jersey, founded at Princeton in 1746, but which had 

*This act appropriated £20,000, which by some is made $50,000, and by- 
others $100,000. 



330 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

its germs twenty years earlier in the " Log College " 
of Rev. William Tennent ; the University of Penn- 
sylvania which began in 1749 as an academy, and 
grew in less than a decade into a college ; and Colum- 
bia, which was founded in 1754 by funds donated by 
private individuals, by £3282 received from a lottery, 
and by £400 given by the king from whom it received 
its early name of King's College. 

Brown and Bowdoin, Dartmouth and Williams, 
Kutgers and Union, date from this century, besides 
other colleges somewhat less frequently mentioned. 
l^or should we neglect to mention the establishment 
in 1784 of the University of the State of E'ew York 
as a central organization for the purpose of incorpo- 
rating and having the oversight of academies and 
colleges, of reporting yearly on the condition of the 
institutions under its charge and of conferring degrees 
higher than A. M. 

On the whole it may fairly be said that, when we 
consider the circumstances of this new and sorely 
troubled country, the degree of educational zeal that 
was displayed in it during the 18th century was not 
surpassed by that of any of the older European 
civilizations. 

Note. — Altliougli I am aware that, from the 15th century, 
the schools and universities of the Netherlands compared favor- 
ably with those of any of the surrounding countries ; that the 
interest in education of the early Dutch settlers of New York, so 
emphatically shown in many of tlie documents of the Document- 
ary History of New York, is an inheritance of the spirit that 
prevailed in the mother country of the emigrants ; and that dur- 
ing the 18th century, schools, as well as flourishing universities, 
existed ; yet it has not seemed expedient to include any account 
of them in tliis brief review. 



CHAPTER XY. 

EDUCATIONAL CHARACTERISTICS. OF THE NINETEENTH 
CENTURY. 

It is probable that every age is prone to magnify 
its own achievements, and to vaunt them above all 
that has hitherto been done. It is certain that this 
^self-magnifying spirit characterizes the 19th century, 
if we may judge of it by the outgivings of those who 
seem to be the accepted mouth-pieces of public opin- 
ion. So far, however, as one may be supposed to 
judge dispassionately of his own times and what they 
have accomplished, this century is likely to be dis- 
tinguished in future ages, not more for its inventions, 
its discoveries in science, and its industrial progress, 
than for the unprecedented educational activity which 
it has displayed, — an activity which has extended to 
all classes of society, and which has produced its most 
remarkable results in the very lowest classes. 

It would obviously be premature at the present 
time to attempt in any detail to weigh the significance 
of the educational events which this century has wit- 
nessed, or to pass any definite judgment upon them. 
The facts are too near at hand, they are too numer- 
ous and complex in character, their actual results are 
still too little apparent, to admit of that truth of depic- 
tion and justness of perspective which should belong 

(331) 



332 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

to an attempt at a historic picture ; even were the 
warmth of personal feeling which present events are 
calculated to excite, not sure to give an undue color- 
ing to many parts. 

Time is the only sure test of the relative importance 
of historic events. It often buries in comparative 
obscurity many occurences which to the actors seemed 
to be of first rate importance, and leaves in bold 
prominence that which to contemporary observers- 
seemed of inferior moment. Thus it is doubtful 
whether, to the men of the 18th century, the struggle 
of vernacular tongues for recognition in instruction 
seemed fraught with the wide-reaching significance 
which we can now see that it really had. To the 
contemporaries of Francke, the fiery religious zeal 
which pervaded his institutions was doubtless a far 
more interesting phenomenon than either his efforts 
for the better training of teachers for his schools, or 
the realistic cast of studies and purposes of instruction 
that prevailed in them ; yet the first was compara- 
tively transient, whilst the importance of the other 
two is becoming daily more apparent. 

These considerations need not, however, deter u& 
from examining in their broader aspects the most 
striking educational facts of our own century, though 
they will in most cases render impossible any very 
reliable estimate of their permanent importance. I 
will therefore state what seem to me to be the most 
noteworthy of these facts in the order in which we 
shall examine them more fully. 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 333 

The first fact that will be likely to arrest the atten- 
tion of even the casual observer, is the enormous 
pedagogical activity by which the 19th century has 
been characterized, an activity which has been dis- 
played, partly in literary or quasi-literary efforts, 
partly in educational experiments some of which have 
become accepted educational usages, and partly also 
in wide-spread educational associations. 

A second fact has been the rapid spread of schools 
of every kind, but most especially of schools for 
universal elementary education, with the growth 
■of which has been correlated a tendency to give the 
elements of learning to all children free from individ- 
ual expense, and to insure to every child at least a 
minimum of training by making school attendance 
•compulsory. 

A third very interesting fact is the great extension 
of the means for the professional training of teachers 
which has taken place during the century, without 
which the increase in the number of popular schools 
would have been likely to disappoint the public expec- 
tations by the meagreness of their results. 

A fourth noteworthy fact is the careful provision 
that has been made in many of the European states 
for thoroughly supervising the work of the schools, — 
a provision whose benefits are being rapidly extended 
to many parts of the United States, since it is seen 
that its importance for the efficiency of the schools is 
second only to that of the training of teachers for their 
work. 



334: THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

The zeal of the advocates of manual and technical 
training has forced on the attention of every one what 
we may fairly consider a fifth characteristic of the 
educational history of the century ; though we shall 
have occasion to observe that the idea of associating 
the training of the hand with the intellectual and 
moral education of youth, is far less modern thaa 
many of its advocates seem to suppose. 

The very considerable improvements that during 
this century have taken place in schools and methods^ 
of instruction, on the general lines of the Innovators^ 
but in which Pestalozzianism has been the chief 
rallying cry, will claim attention as a sixth educational 
fact, and one of the most interesting of all, since it is- 
that through which all other facts of the same order 
gain their significance. 

A seventh fact of no small interest is the vigorous dis- 
cussion which this century has witnessed of the relative^ 
value of various studies as means of culture, in the 
course of which the claims of the classics, of the mathe- 
matics, and of the sciences of nature, have been 
examined diligently and with some heat ; and its 
interest is enhanced when we consider that since the 
days of Plato and Aristotle the culture value of 
studies has been comparatively little emphasized, 
whilst a comparison of culture values has hardly been 
thought of. This fact is of special interest, as an 
awakening of the dormant Humanitarian ideal, which 
seems destined more and more consciously to influence 
the education of the future. 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY CHARACTERISTICS. 335 

Section I.— Pedagogical Activity. 

Any attempt at an examination of the vast pro- 
duct of literary activity in the domain of peda- 
gogy during the 19th century would be manifestly 
impossible, until time has winnowed from it all that is 
ephemeral, and left prominent only the enduring. 
German treatises, which are the most numerous of 
any, would alone fill a very considerable library ; and 
many among them, like the works of Herbart and 
Beneke, Waitz and Dittes, Schrader and Nohl, which 
would be most desirable additions to an educator's 
library, are inaccessible to most English speaking 
teachers, from lack of translation. Froebel's Educa- 
tion of Man, and Preyer's interesting study of child- 
hood, have found translators; Barnard's American 
Journal of Education, that wonderfully rich pedagogic 
collection, has given in English dress, but in detached 
portions, a large part of von Raumer's History of 
Pedagogy, and also much of Pestalozzi's writings. 
Bosenkranz's Philosophy of Education has met with 
favor in the annotated translation of it which has 
appeared ; but when one reflects on the rich stores of 
pedagogic thought and experience that are hidden 
from the inquiring teachers of our own country in an 
unfamiliar tongue, and on the thoroughness of treat- 
ment which characterizes many of these treatises, one 
can but hope that several carefully selected works of 
German pedagogues may soon be made accessible to 
English-speaking teachers. Possibly none would be 
more widely acceptable than the second and third 



336 THE HISTOKY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

parts of Dittes' Scliule der Padagogik, followed by 
Waltz's Allgeraeine Padagogik, and Paulsen's Ges- 
chichte des Gelehrten Unterriclits. 

While Germany has been most prolific in pedagogic 
literature, other European countries have shown a 
creditable zeal in this line. A few excellent French 
works have already been rendered into English ; some 
others ought soon to find translators, especially the 
brilliant and valuable work by Prof. Compayre entitled 
" Histoire Critique des Doctrines de I'Education en 
France, &c." The remarkable work of Rosmini on 
" Method in Education," though but a portion of a 
large projected treatise, proves that Italy has felt the 
impulse of the pedagogic spirit of the 19tli century. 

I am inclined to think that Great Britain deserves 
to rank next to Germany in the influence exerted by 
its contributions to the literature of education, a num- 
ber of which are quite as well known in America as 
in England. Such are the works of Mr. Gill and 
Prof. Laurie ; the excellent lectures of Mr. Fitch on 
teaching ; the interesting sketches of educational 
reformers by the lamented Mr. Quick ; the lectures 
of Mr. Joseph Payne, so well adapted to inspire 
teachers to seek right principles of instruction and to 
use them in right ways ; and Dr. Bain's " Education 
as a Science," a somewhat detailed treatment of gen- 
eral pedagogy, in which every point that is discussed 
is sharply referred to its scientific basis in those 
sciences in which the author is himself so eminent an 
authority, and whose treatment of controverted points 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 35Y 

is 80 forcible that, where we are inclined to disagree 
with the author, we feel ourselves compelled to fall 
back on something more substantial than mere pre- 
conceived ideas. 

But of all that has been written in English, during 
the present century, probably no pedagogic treatise 
has attracted more wide-spread attention, or has exerted 
more influence than Herbert Spencer's " Education," 
It is characterized by that clearness of exposition 
and felicity of illustration of which Mr. Spencer is so 
great a master and which never leaves one in doubt 
as to his opinions. Of all the pedagogic works of the 
century that have appeared in English, I am inclined 
to think that a brief examination of this will give us 
the fairest sample of the nature and direction of peda- 
gogic thought. 

This treatise, which appeared originally as four 
Keview articles considering education from as many 
different points of view, in its collected form, consists 
of four chapters treating respectively, of the best 
means of Education, of Intellectual, of Moral, and of 
Physical education. 

In the first chapter he propounds the question 
*' What knowledge is of most worth ? " and gives to it 
an answer which, though widely and vigorously con- 
troverted, seems to be gaining yearly more adherents, 
at least for the present. Philosopher as he is, he sees 
that for any definite answer to a question of such vital 
moment, some standard of relative value must be 
fixed which is likely to meet with general acceptance ; 



368 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

and he proposes in substance this proposition as such 
a standard, viz.: that the relative value in education 
of various groups of studies should be tested by inquir- 
ing how G&Gctiv elj thej pro?note complete living. 

To this proposition, he adds a statement of those 
forms of activity which, in his view, constitute a com- 
plete human life, arranging them as follows in the 
order of their relative importance : (1) the activities of 
self-preservation, (2) those that are needful to secure 
the necessaries of life, (3) those that pertain to the 
rearing and training of offspring, (4) those that pro- 
mote proper social and political relations, and (5) those 
that look to the culture and gratification of the aesthetic 
feelings and taste. 

He ingeniously reasons " that these divisions sub- 
ordinate one another in the foregoing order, because 
the corresponding divisions of life make one another 
possible in that order." Thus man must first know 
how to preserve his physical existence, and to minister 
by his activities to his daily recurring needs, before he 
is fit to have and to rear children ; the proper rearing 
and training of children takes precedence of social and 
political duties, because " the goodness of a society 
ultimately depends on the nature of its citizens," and 
this nature " is more modifiable by early training 
than by anything else ; " and finally all these are more 
vitally necessary than the various sources of elegant 
pleasure, such as are afforded by music, poetry, elo- 
quence, and the fine arts, because " society supplies the 
conditions of their growth, and also the ideas and 
sentiments they express." 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHAKACTERISTICS. 33& 

Without pausing just at present to question the 
sufficiency of his statement of those activities which 
constitute complete living, let us see to what choice^ 
of means his postulates lead him, with the addition of 
this farther postulate, that "acquirement of every 
kind has two values, — value as knowledge, and value- 
as discipline,"— or as the Germans phrase it, — a 
material and a formal value. Without entering at 
all into the process of illustrative exposition which he 
adopts, and in which he is so remarkably expert, it i& 
sufficient to say that, examining separately each of the 
activities that he recognizes as to the kind of knowl- 
edge and training that it demands for its successful 
conduct, he finds in every case that sciencei^ the most 
efficient means. It is to be observed, however, that 
in the extension which he gives to the term science^ 
it includes not only the sciences of nature, but also 
sociology and psychology, mathematics and history,, 
excluding only the science which embodies all others,, 
the science of language. 

Finally, after establishing to his own satisfaction 
the preeminence of science as a means of preparation 
for the various activities of human life, he proceeds- 
farther to show that, better than language, it trains 
memory, judgment, and reasoning ; and that moreover 
it affords a most efficient training in morals and 
religion. It is easy, however, to see that in consider- 
ing science as a means for developing the moral and 
religious side of man's nature, Spencer has tacitly 
narrowed his view of science and limited it to the- 
sciences of nature. 



.^40 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

On a closer examination of this famous chapter, 
philosophical though its analysis appears, strongly as 
its conclusions seem to be enforced, and convincing as 
its argument is likely to impress one as being on a 
<jursory reading, — it is sure to rouse in the critical 
reader a feeling that something essential is lacking, 
that there is some latent source of error in the dis- 
•cussion. 

A critical examination shows that the source of error 
is twofold, being first, an imperfect view of what 
constitutes complete living ; and second, a temporary 
massing together under the vague name science, of 
subjects generically unlike in character, omitting only 
from this heterogeneous mass, a group of subjects 
whose use especially characterizes man, and is both 
the symbol and the instrument of his superiority 
among living beings : for man is not merely an observ- 
ing, thinking, morally judging, and religiously aspiring 
animal ; but he is all these, and that too in a con- 
stantly increasing degree, because he is also a talking 
animal, who uses language as the embodiment of his 
various experiences and is thus enabled to grow more 
intelligent by his experiences. 

Considering now what is included under the term 
■science, we find that Spencer comprehends under it, 
not only those sciences whose subject-matter is of the 
most concrete possible character, and whose method 
demands the use of the observing powers followed by 
reasoning more or less completely inductive ; but also 
tnathematics whose subject-matter and method differ 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY CHAKACTERISTICS. 341 

toto orbe from the former, since it uses rigid deduction 
upon concepts of the most abstract nature, demand- 
ing no observation : and even adds to these history^ 
whose gathering, verification, and analogic use of testi- 
mony, in the formation of opinions about past events^ 
obviously involves a widely different use of the- 
human powers from either of the other two, and botb 
trains and informs to quite different purpose. 

It may readily be seen that a dextrous reasoner, 
using a premise compounded of so heterogeneous^ 
elements, could easily prove almost anything he 
wished ; by using it in its entire vague extent when 
it suited his purpose, as Spencer has done in treating 
of human activities and their requirements; or by 
limiting attention to some convenient portion at other 
times, as he does when considering the disciplinary 
results of science. The fallacy is therefore the use of 
a vague, heterogeneous, and variable middle term. 
It is used indeed to strongly emphasize the worth of 
certain valuable and much neglected studies and thus 
has done good service ; but, in doing this, it has pre- 
sented a partial truth as though it were the whole 
truth, and thus leads to error. 

Most unprejudiced educators doubtless believe with 
Spencer that science, strictly so-called, and mathe- 
matics, and history, are each and all valuable, both a& 
discipline and as means for the better conduct of life \ 
but they do not necessarily think that he has given a 
sufficient answer to the question with which he set 
out, viz.; what knowledge is of most worth. The 



34:2 THE HISTORY OF MODKRN EDUCATION 

whole truth is that all three of these groups of subjects, 
and language also, are not only very useful, but even 
indispensable means of a complete culture, — a culture 
that shall fit a man to act well his part in all the real 
activities that make complete living, and shall so 
equip him with both mental furniture and trained 
powers, that he shall not find himself helpless in the 
presence of any problem that life may present. 

This brings us to the examination of the scheme of 
-activities which Spencer deems to constitute complete 
living. And here we at once observe that, although 
he names the moral and religious sentiments amongst 
the capabilities that are trained by science, he has 
curiously enough omitted any mention of them in his 
detail of the experiences of a complete life. He has 
described man as a being who cherishes life, rears off- 
spring, does duty in society, and enjoys sesthetic 
pleasures; but he leaves out what constitutes his 
worth in all those activities which bring him into 
relations with others, that is, all that makes up 
character. 

Prof. Compayre, in the closing chapter of his history 
of educational thought in France, has noted and sup- 
plied this omission ; and he has done it so well, that I 
gladly seize this opportunity to give the reader a 
glimpse of one of the foremost French writers of this 
century on pedagogic questions, in his statement of 
the bearing of this omitted activity on the question of 
the value of studies as means. 

Compayre is ready to accept as valid Spencer's 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 343 

standard of value ; but in arranging his scale of activi- 
ties, he connects Spencer's second with the first where 
it logically belongs, and intercalates in its place as 
second in urgency only to- self-preservation, the moral 
and the religious tendencies, conscience, moral thought- 
fulness, and a will rightly directed, — in short all that 
goes to the formation of character. Man must learn 
to live first, he is ready to concede, but next to that 
he must learn to live rightly, before he is fit to become 
either parent or citizen, or to enjoy innocent pleasures 
to the full. And few will venture to deny that Com- 
payre is right. Kollin did but express the general 
opinion of the ages, heathen as well as Christian, 
when he said — " It is the good qualities of the heart 
which give value to all other qualities, and which, 
while making the true merit of the man, render him 
also a fit instrument for promoting the well-being of 
society." 

The modifications of Spencer's list of means which 
Compayre deduces from this interpolated activity, are 
important. " Since the soul is not created in its 
finished form," he says, " it should be shaped by the 
lessons of history, by the models of literature and art, 
and by religious instruction." He thus demands the 
addition to Spencer's scheme, of definite instruction 
in language, and of 2i positive training in morals and 
religion, in place of one that is purely incidental, and 
that leads too often to a mere agnostic altruism which 
knows no God, and recognizes no higher sanction for 
morality than a supposed tendency to increase earthly 



344 THE HISTORY OF MODEEN EDUCATION. 

happiness. He thus completes the cycle of educa- 
tional means, science, language, history, mathematics, 
and religion, — all needful to fit a man for complete 
living, each contributing its due share to the task, 
whatever the degree of completeness to which it may 
be carried, and no one of them entitled to claim pre- 
eminence over its fellows. 

The most enlightened educators tend everywhere to 
act upon this view in the selection and arrangement 
of educational means, though not always selecting the 
ancient classics, which Compayre w^ould prefer, for 
language training ; whereas Spencer's scheme, which 
was intended to correct the obvious one-sidedness of 
an education too exclusively devoted to dead languages, 
would lead to a new and even more injurious one- 
sidedness. 

In the second chapter of this treatise, which deals 
with intellectual education, Spencer uses his powers 
of exposition and illustration to enforce educational 
principles which had been formulated by the Innova- 
tors, but had now taken the name of Pestalozzi. 
These had hitherto made but little way in England 
and America ; and I am inclined to think that we 
owe the fact that they have now become familiar to 
English speaking people, largely to this work of 
Spencer, — that he first effectively introduced them to 
our teachers, in whose improving practice they are 
gradually making themselves felt. In this work, also 
the earnest and animated lectures of Mr. Joseph 
Payne, which have been widely read, have done effec- 
tive service. 



NINEl'EENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 345 

The chapter on moral education, or the training of 
the young to estimable character, is highly suggestive. 
Conceiving rightly the importance of this duty, and 
likewise its universality, since the vast majority of 
persons are destined to be parents, if not teachers, he 
declares that " The subject which involves all other 
subjects, and therefore the subject in which the educa- 
tion of every one should culminate is the theory and 
practice of education." He states clearly the difficul- 
ties which obstruct the better moral development of 
the young, difficulties which arise in part from the 
defects of those who have their education in charge, 
in part from the imperfections of the society for which 
they are to be trained. Hence he expects that general 
moral amelioration will be but gradual, and that it 
will be correlated with a gradual elevation of both 
individuals and societies to higher planes of living and 
thinking. 

Spencer anticipates much from the general appli- 
cation in moral training of the idea of natural jpun- 
ishmeiits, or rather natural reactions, that is to say, 
reactions which are obviously the direct, natural, and 
invariable results of conduct good or bad, and which 
teach children by experience to choose the good and 
avoid the bad. To the exposition of this idea, and 
to copious illustrations of its application in many of 
the cases which most frequently arise in youthful 
training, he devotes the entire chapter. From this, 
which he considers the Normal Sj^stem of discipline 
and claims to be parallel both with that by which 



346 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

inanimate nature teaches ns to obey her laws, and 
with that which the adult man encounters in active 
life, he expects several very important advantages 
over the usual course of youthful discipline. Whether 
or not this fundamental idea on which Spencer bases 
his plan for moral development, would accomplish all 
that is desirable in the moral training of the young, 
and would admit of convenient application in all 
cases of discipline that might arise, there can be little 
doubt that it would be a great improvement on the 
present arbitrary modes of procedure in which rewards 
and penalties have little obvious relation to conduct. 

The last chapter, in which physical education is 
discussed, is especially valuable, since it sets forth 
clearly the physiological relations to innervation and 
mental activity of the function of nutrition, and of 
the due conservation and utilization of its results in 
the processes of growth and strength by proper exer- 
cise and clothing; and because it illustrates the prin- 
ciple of the inverse ratio of rapid growth to structural 
perfection as holding good as w^ell in the brain as 
elsewhere, so that the hastening of brain structure by 
urgent early education is attended by arrest of its 
growth and by eventual diminution of its power. 
These important truths which are too apt to be over- 
looked by those who have charge of the young, he 
illustrates and enforces in treating of diet, clothing, 
exercise, and mental exertion. 

Noteworthy in this chapter are his refutation of the 
hardening-process notion, his preference of free and 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHARACTEEISTICS. 347 

vigorous play to formal gymnastics because of the 
tonic effects of youthful happiness, and his advice 
that mental exertion should in all cases be restricted 
in a degree proportioned to the rapidity of growth, 
and should be increased only so fast as the normal 
rate of growth diminishes. 

Despite the narrowing tendency of some of its 
doctrines, this work of Spencer justly holds a high 
place in the pedagogic literature of the 19th century. 

The United States have likewise made no inconsid- 
erable contributions to the pedagogic literature of the 
century. They have produced works like the lectures 
and reports of Horace Mann, and "the treatises of 
Page and E'orthend, of Hosmer and Mansfield, and 
not a few others, all of which have been useful in 
their time ; but probably the works most widely known 
are the accounts of foreign school systems by Alexan- 
der Bache and Dr. Henry Barnard, and the vast 
encyclopaedic collection of valuable pedagogic matter 
brought together by the last named author in his 
American Journal of Education. 

When we view this pedagogic activity of the 19th 
century in its quasi-literary aspect,— in the multitude 
of educational essays, proceedings of associations, and 
periodicals ; of educational reports by cities, States 
and countries ; of analytic discussions of educational 
exhibits ; of publications like the Circulars of Infor- 
mation of the United States; and last but not least, in 
the swarms of text-books which hover over every 
department of human knowledge, and which might 



348 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

not inappropriately give to this century the title of 
" The Age of Text-Books," — we shall doubtless need 
no other proof that educational interests, so far as 
indicated in printed works, have received an amount of 
attention unparalleled in tlie world's history. 

The practical expression of this pedagogic activity 
may be seen in the systematic school organizations of 
most European countries and American cities, and 
the highly encouraging outline schemes of organiza- 
tion of many American States and provinces, all of 
which are practically, as systems, the work of the 
present century, and indeed, in not a few instances, 
owe their efficiency mostly to what has been done in 
the last sixty years. 

Still another outgrowth of this activity is presented 
by the numerous and effective associations of teachers, 
to promote the interests of their calling by papers and 
discussions, in which the results of individual experi- 
ence are made the common property of many, while 
stimulating all to more earnest efforts by the conscious- 
ness that they are not isolated units, but members of 
a great army of workers animated by a common pur- 
pose. Thus, in the United States, we have our 
National Association, organized in 1857, and bringing 
the prominent teachers of our vast domain into health- 
ful relations with one another : most if not all of the 
States have their associations ; and in not a few cases, 
the associative principle is extended to smaller sections 
than States, and to educators in special departments. 
Yet the United States are by no means in advance of 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHABACTEKISTICS. 349 

many other countries in associated efforts for the 
advancement of education. 

Such then are the manifestations of the extraordi- 
nary pedagogic activity of the 19th century, which are 
presented by its literary and semi-literary productivity, 
by its organizations, and by its associated efforts. 
They are certainly very noteworthy. 

Section II. 

Let us now see what has been the result of all this 
activity in the general diffusion oi jpopular education^ 
which, not content with the improvement of the 
better classes and of the elite youth, reaches down help- 
ing hands to elevate the poorest, the humblest, and 
the most neglected classes of society. We have 
already seen what was the condition of general educa- 
tion in the 18th century, that little effort had been 
made in that direction save in Germany, Scotland, 
and a small part of the United States ; that the results 
of this effort had been neither wide nor deep; and 
that the state of things at the close of that century was 
not very encouraging, the efforts of von Rochow in 
Prussia, of Scotland and New England, and the 
notable temporary aid given by the New York legis- 
lature, being the brightest points in the situation. 

This consideration will enable us more clearly to 
appreciate the enormous advance that has been made 
in public elementary education during the present 
centur}^, in many states of Europe and America, not 
to mention India and Japan. In all parts of the 
civilized world very considerable efforts have been 



350 THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

made to extend the benefits of education to all classes, 
and in many countries, the ratio of illiteracy has 
become relatively small and is decreasing. This is 
especially true in Germany, Switzerland, Holland, 
Denmark, France, and Great Britain, and in the 
northern United States and Canada. Indeed it might 
be said without any material inaccuracy that general 
elementary education is the creation of the 19th 
century. 

The movement has however not been free from 
vicissitudes. Germany is apt to be referred to as the 
typical home of progressive popular education ; yet, 
in the opinion of well-informed Germans, its progress 
there during this century has met with a serious 
retrogression. In the period between 1840 and 1872, 
a reactionary movement occurred in Prussia and some 
other Germanic states, which was so serious in its 
effects that in 1870, of the recruits for the army from 
three provinces of Prussia about 14 per cent were 
wholly illiterate, whilst of the recruits from Saxony 
and Wiirtemberg less than five in a thousand were 
unable to read and write. The effects of the reforms 
made in 1872 have been so marked that illiteracy 
amongst the recruits of 1888 has been reduced in the 
worst cases to less than a fourth of that in 1870. 

The Census Keports of the United States for 1880, 
show that of persons ten years old and upwards 13.4 
per cent were unable to read. Though this may not 
seem a very encouraging exhibit, we find occasion to 
modify any unfavorable opinion of the efficiency of 



NINETEENTH CENTUKY CHARACTEEISTICS. 351 

popular education in the United States, when looking 
farther in the census tables we find how large a pro- 
portion of the illiterates is made up of the freedmen 
of the south and of ignorant foreigners. When the 
foreign element is eliminated from the calculation, 
Massachusetts is found to have but seven per thousand 
and New York twentj-two per thousand who are 
unable to write. The energy with which educational 
extension has been pushed during the past decade in 
sections where ignorance most abounds, gives reason 
to expect that the census of 1890 will show great 
progress over 1880. 

The State of New York affords a good example of 
the growth of our public school system, and of the 
fact that it owes its efficiency wholly to the 19th cen- 
tury. In this State great difficulties were early 
encountered in all attempts at common education, 
from the heterogeneity of its population, composed as 
it was of immigrants of several nationalities and 
speaking different languages or dialects. Hence until 
near the close of the 18th century, education was 
mostly private. An act passed in 1795 appropriating 
$100,000 a year for five years for the encouragement 
of schools, proved inoperative during its last two 
years, expired by its own limitation, and was not 
renewed. 

In 1805, however, provisions were made for the? 
formation of a fund whose income should aid in th& 
support of schools, and this fund in 1890 had increased 
to $4,023,140. Also in 1836 the State received as its 



352 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

share of the surplus in the United States treasury, 
which was deposited until called for with the several 
States on the basis of their representation in congress, 
the sum of $4,014,520, and devoted it wholly to the 
promotion of education. This constitutes what is 
called the United States Deposit Fund, the income of 
which is yearly apportioned to common and secondary 
schools, to instruction of teachers' classes, and to the 
increase of the general school fund. 

It was not until 1812 that an act was passed taking 
the elementary schools under the oversight of the 
State, and looking to their permanent establishment. 
Hence the school system of IS'ew York is now (1891) 
but seventy-nine years old. From 1841 to 1856 
experiments were tried first with county supervison 
and then with supervision by towns, ending in 1856 
with the present system of supervision by Assembly 
Districts. 

Up to 1867, the school moneys received from the 
State were supplemented in the several school dis- 
tricts by rate hills ^ in which the deficiencies were 
apportioned among the patrons of the schools in pro- 
portion to the number of days of attendance of their 
children. Since 1867, the public schools have been 
supported wholly by funds received from the State 
and from local taxation, and instruction in them is 
J^ree to all children residing in the respective districts. 

The time during which schools are required to be 
in session was in 1880 raised from 28 weeks, as it had 
stood for a considerable period, to 32 weeks, a higher 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHAKACTERISTICS. 353 

tninimum than is demanded in any other State, though 
^t least three other States show a higher average num- 
ber of days during which schools were in session. 
Daring the year 1890, 1,042,160 children were in 
attendance on these schools, more than 17 per cent of 
the entire population ; and tlie entire expense of the 
.system was $17,292,471i%V ^^ *2.90 for each indi- 
vidual of the population. In 1886, Prussia expended 
per unit of population nearly $1.02 for her popular 
^schools. 

It is often alleged that the growth in efficiency of 
the public schools in the United States has by no 
means kept due pace with the increase in attendance 
and expenditures ; and this allegation is probably not 
without too much foundation. Its chief cause is 
sufficiently apparent in the lack of any settled and 
permanent teaching body ; and this cause of the lack 
of any sufficient result from the sums that are expend- 
ed, can be removed only by the growth of a public 
sentiment, which shall regard the teacher's vocation 
as a permanent and honored profession, to be carefully 
prepared for and competently compensated, and which 
: shall besides be ready to place the teacher's tenure of 
his place on a basis more reliable than local, or some- 
:times even personal, fluctuations of opinion. 

But aside from faults like this, which are the per- 
haps unavoidable attendants of the rapid growth from 
'Chaos towards a system, — when we consider that what 
iias been done to provide instruction for all classes is 
the work of a century which is but just entering on 



354 THE HISTORY OF MODKRN EDUCATION. 

its last decade, and that the illustration that has been 
given has been chosen, not because it is probably the- 
most favorable (England would be quite as favorable), 
but because the materials chance to be the most acces- 
sible, — we shall doubtless see occasion to wonder 
rather that so much has been done than that it has not 
been more perfectly done. 

Correlated with this vast extension of facilities for 
popular instruction, has been the growth of a tendency 
to make it hoth free and compulsory. In Germany 
elementary instruction, usually between the ages of 
six and fourteen, is every where compulsory, though a 
small fee is paid by those who can afford it, in some 
of the States at least. In England also elementary 
education has been made obligatory, a small weekly 
fee being required, in certain cases, of those who are 
able to pay. In France elementary education has 
recently been made both free and compulsory ; and 
in some of the smaller European states, like Switzer- 
land and Denmark, compulsory attendance at school 
within certain limits of age is the rule. 

It is also asserted that where obligatory school 
attendance has been some time enforced, it soon 
ceases to be attended with any considerable trouble or 
friction. Certainly one of the things that strongly 
impresses an American visitor to many European 
cities is the entire absence of children of school 
age from the streets during the hours appointed for 
schools. 

In the United States, the tendency has so far been 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHAKACTEKISTICS. 355 

stronger towards free schools than towards compulsory 
attendance. So-called compulsory laws have been 
passed in several States, but they do not seem to have 
been anywhere thoroughly enforced ; and in a coun- 
try where, if anywhere, the very logic of its institu- 
tions demands universal education, there have not 
been lacking those who have declared any attempts to 
compel attendance of children at school an infringe- 
ment of the sacred rights of parents, the major part 
of such parents as are likely to need compulsion, being 
as a matter of fact, paupers, drunkards, or criminals 
whose existence is a burden or a danger to society. 

There are not wanting, however, indications that 
sophisms like this, or that other which plausibly 
declares that compulsory school attendance is a viola- 
tion of the spirit of our free institutions, are losing 
their force, and that enlightened communities, espe- 
cially those in which are many large cities, are likely 
soon" to insist that if owners of property are to be 
called on yearly to pay large taxes for educational 
purposes that they may be assured against the dangers 
of ignorance and vice, they shall at least receive that 
for which they pay. It can hardly be doubted that 
in the United States, as in other civilized countries, 
the elementary education which this century has 
offered to all, will be assured to every child, without 
any too tender regard for the sacred right of ignorant 
and vicious parents to rear their children in like 
ignorance and vice. 

A most significant fact in the extension of education 



S56 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

during the present century, remains to be mentioned. 
This is the founding of the so-called Kindergarten by 
Friedrich Froebel in 1840. This new form of school, 
which, by guiding the playful activities of childhood 
into channels that shall be wholesome as well as 
pleasurable, is the practical embodiment of an idea, 
•emphasized by many previous writers on education, 
makes a great extension of education downwards, to 
-children at the most plastic age, and seems destined 
to produce the most marked effects on the develop- 
ment of coming generations. In this place it con- 
cerns us only as an additional fact in the widening of 
the sphere of education ; but the ideas of its origin- 
ator, who was probably the most original educational 
genius of this century, have a wider reach than the 
Kindergarten, and we shall meet them in more than 
one future connection. 

This however seems the fittest place to introduce a 
brief sketch of the career of one who must always 
hold a high place in the educational history of the 
19tli century. 

Friedrich Froebel was born in a village nearEudol- 
stadt in 1782. Schools seem to have had little to do 
with the training of his lively and unsettled, but always 
reflectively observant youthful years. At the age of 
eighteen, with some knowledge of natural history and 
mathematics, picked up by his own efforts while 
working for a forester, he betook himself to the 
university of Jena. During the brief time that his 
slender means permitted him to remain here, he seems 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHAEACTEEISTICS. 357 

always to have been seeking confirmation of an idea 
that he had early conceived of the inner unity of all 
things. As he himself expressed it, he sought "guid- 
ance to an inner living connection and representation, 
of inward and comprehensive conformity to law." 

Then came a brief period devoted to various bread- 
winning avocations, and to the care of his dying 
father. Finally, on his way to Frankfort to become 
an artist, he seems to have hit on the idea that formed 
his life-work ; for he wrote to a friend engaged in 
agriculture, " Do thou give men bread ; be it my 
effort to give men to themselves^ 

In Frankfort he met Gruner, the director of the 
model school in that city, and, at his suggestion, 
abandoned the idea of being an artist, and became a 
teacher in his school. Here he says,'" I felt myself 
as it were in my long-missing element, and I was as 
happy as a fish in water." 

In 1808, having become tutor to two high-born boys, 
he went with them to Yverdun, and for two years 
was a vigorous co-laborer with Pestalozzi. Here he 
not only gained the central idea of his master's system, 
the idea of genuine human development and its con- 
ditions, but he improved on Pestalozzi^s idea of self- 
activity by extending it to the entire nature of the 
child: thus he demands that all the capabilities of the 
pupil's nature shall constantly be in a state of pleasur- 
able activity, adai^ted to each individual heing^ that 
he may realize "in a peculiar, personal, and unique 
manner " his own special nature. Practically also, he 



.358 THE HISTORY OF MODEEN EDUCATION. 

excelled Pestalozzi in his empliasizing of successive 
development, — such a development that the child 
should completely live through every one of its stages, 
and really gain what it is capable of imparting. 

We may also refer to his experience at Yverdun, 
Froebel's principle, that " from the deed^ from doing, 
must genuine education and development of the 
human being begin " ; that living, doing, and appre- 
hending, go hand in hand in varying proportions in 
his culture, and that not merely should a lively curi- 
osity be awakened by the presentation of things 
before ideas and words, but also that bodily activity, 
or doing corresponding thereto, should at once be 
elicited. 

Returning from Yverdun in 1810, he spent two 
years in the study of languages in the universities of 
Gottingen and Berlin ; served as a volunteer in the 
army of liberation in 1813, where he cemented mem- 
orable friendships with two of his future co-laborers ; 
and, at the close of the war, became an assistant in 
the mineral ogical museum of Berlin. In this last 
position, while communing with dead minerals, he 
conceived the idea of the law of " The Reconciliation 
of Polar Opposites," as the unifying law of life and 
therefore of education, — a law which those familiar 
with his writings will recognize as playing an import- 
ant part in his theory of education. 

In 1817, he initiated his work of human education 
in a school at Keilhau, beginning with six boys ; his 
^wo old army friends, Middendorff and Langethal, 



NINETEENTH CENTUKY CHAEACTEEISTICS. 359 

soon associated themselves to Lis undertaldng ; and 
the school grew apace until it numbered sixty pupils. 
But with its growing reputation hostilit}^ also arose: 
the government was asked to obliterate "this nest of 
demagogues " : instead of doing this, a prominent 
school man was sent to examine the accused insti- 
tution : his report was not merely favorable, but 
eulogistic: still the opposition gathered force, the 
attendance of the school declined, and in 1831, Froebel 
left it in the hands of a friend. 

During the next nine years, he lived partly in 
Switzerland, where he promoted educational under, 
takings, and partly in Berlin. Here the idea of the 
Kindergarten first took form, and finally in 1840, the 
first school of the kind was opened in Blankenburg, 
near his birth-place. It sprang from his growing 
•conviction, that " the rousing of the need to learn 
must precede learning, and that originating signifies 
a human activity, which has indeed welled forth from 
the inner life, but which in turn reacts upon its source^ 
developing and quickening it;" and that "Education 
has and retains a healthy hasis^ conformable to its 
true nature, only where woman puts forth all her 
power for the development of the tender human bud 
in the life of the child." 

This great original enterprise, however, though 
approved by cities and princes, did not escape opposi- 
tion. It was accused of atheism and socialism ; and 
on these grounds it was prohibited in Prussia in 1851. 
This prohibition was rescinded later, when the idea 



360 THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

of the Kindergarten had spread to many lands ; but 
not in time to cheer its venerable apostle, who died in 
June, 1852. 

Section III. 

As has already been seen, the need of some pro- 
fessional preparation for the business of teaching, had 
come to be apprehended in the 18th century; and 
about the middle of that century, the first definite 
public provision for that purpose had been made in 
Germany, and somewhat later in Austria. We have 
also seen that the movement once begun, had attained 
considerable proportions, more than thirty Teachers' 
Seminaries having been established in Germany 
before 1800. 

This movement has progressed during the present 
centurj, until now all scliools in Germany are supplied 
with well-trained and thoroughly tested teachers. And 
not only is this true, but the example of Germany has 
been influential in most other European states and in 
America, provisions more or less effective for the 
training of teachers having widely been made. Of 
this France is a striking example. Already previous 
to 1833, according to Guizot, 47 primary normal 
schools had been established by the voluntary efforts 
of the towns or departments. These were adopted by 
Guizot as governmental institutions, whilst he also 
encouraged the nurseries for teachers afforded by vari- 
ous religious bodies. The system has had such growth 
that it has recently been reported that France has 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHAEACTERISTICS. 361 

now lYl well-equipped normal schools, being one for 
every 222,000 of her population. 

A beginning of training schools in Great Britain 
was made in Glasgow in 182Y by David Stow, in his 
Normal Seminary which gained a great reputation ; 
and already, not only are a considerable number of 
Training Colleges doing effective work, but professor- 
ships of pedagogy have been founded in two of the 
Scottish Universities, and provisions for a certain 
amount of pedagogic instruction have been made in 
the great English Universities. 

In the states of Western Europe, the problem of 
supplying the schools with properly trained teachers 
is comparatively a simple one. Its elements are 
known, and admit of definite calculation. The popu- 
lation is so dense as to facilitate the easy collection of 
the children into schools of a considerable size. 
Teaching is a permanent and well-recognized employ- 
ment which few or no teachers expect ever to change. 
Hence the numbers annually needed to supply vacan- 
cies by death or old age can be closely estimated, and 
the supply provided for in the institutions for the 
training of teachers. 

In America the elements in the problem of the 
supply of teachers are by no means so simple. Out- 
side of the cities and villages, the population is usually 
so widely scattered that schools of a proper size for 
economy of teaching are not easily gathered, thus 
calling for an undue multiplication of teachers. Again, 
teaching has not become recognized as a permanent 



362 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

vocation. Few teachers look to it as their life work ; 
a large majority are women who abandon the calling 
when they marry, if not earlier ; the terms of service 
for which they are engaged, rarely more than a y^ar, 
are often less ; in the year 1890, of the 31,703 teachers 
employed in the schools of New York, Y838, or nearly 
25 per cent, taught less than a year ; and yet the State 
of New York is probably a favorable example of per- 
manency of tenure. 

Under such circumstances it is obvious that efforts 
to recruit the body of teachers closely resemble an 
attempt to fill a sieve with water. It is probable that 
to place the average term of service of those who 
teach at five years would be an over-estimate. Ob- 
viously then the solution of this problem by the 
agency of normal schools, which is successful in the 
Old World, cannot yet be successful in the New. 
Local and temporary needs, must for a considerable 
period still, be supplied from local and merely tem- 
porary sources ; and it needs no little pedagogic 
sagacity to do this as effectively as the circumstances 
permit. 

The problem of providing teachers with some pre- 
vious training was first attacked in this country on the 
side of local supply, by the designation in 1S35 of 
eight academies in different sections of the State of 
New York to train teachers' classes, the State paying 
each academy $400 for this service. The scheme, 
which, as first attempted, was somewhat too ambitious 
for its purpose, has undergone various modifications 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHAEACTERISTICS. 363 

and received a great extension, entirely justifying its 
wisdom by its results in promoting better instruction 
in the rural schools. In the year 1888-9 more than a 
hundred such classes were in progress, giving some 
training to 2,tt69 accepted candidates. 

The more stringent regulations adopted in 1889-90 
naturally caused some diminution in the number of 
both institutions and accepted candidates ; yet in 1890, 
103 such classess were organized with a membership 
of 1827 pupils. The State has for a considerable 
period appropriated $30,000 annually for the sup- 
port of these training classes, and it is obvious how 
effective such a provision may be made for its special 
purpose. 

In 18i3 another and even wider-reaching means 
was devised for improving in some degree the local 
and temporary supplies of teachers for rural schools, 
a means which by its effectiveness in bettering the 
quality of instruction and in the wide diffusion of 
better educational ideals, has been generally adopted 
in the United States and Canada. This means is the 
County Institute, devised by Mr. J. S. Denman, who 
organized the first institute ever held, in 1843, in 
Ithaca, E". Y. Held annually for a week by experi- 
enced conductors, who give familiar illustrations of 
the most important principles of instruction and man- 
agement, these institutes act the part of both element- 
ary training school and teachers' association with 
young persons, who otherwise would in many cases 
have no pedagogic knowledge and little idea of the 
system of which they form a part. 



364 THE HISTORY OF MODEKN EDUCATION. 

Wisely adapted for their purpose as are the Teachers' 
Institutes and the Teachers' Classes in Academies and 
High schools, and great as is the good they have done 
in raising the character of the instruction given in the 
rural schools by young persons with whom teaching 
is only a temporary employment, it may readily be 
seen that they are but supplements, rendered neces- 
sary by a passing condition, to that more complete 
training for the work of the teacher which may truly 
be called professional. In this respect also, in the 
foundation and support of normal schools, the record 
of the United States has been very creditable, when 
we consider the great difficulty that has been men-, 
tioned of filling the ever-vanishing ranks of an evan- 
escent vocation. 

Massachusetts led the way in establishing normal 
schools by opening three in 1839 and 1840. New 
York followed her example in 1844 by founding a 
normal school at her State capital. At present Mas- 
sachusetts has six such schools, and New York eleven ; 
and 27 per cent, of the teachers of Massachusetts are 
graduates of her normals, while 13 per cent, more 
have had some professional training. 

Not only have most of the other States now estab- 
lished normal schools, but it is becoming common for 
the considerable cities to recruit their corps of teachers 
by training-classes of their own, the members of 
which are usually graduates from the high schools. 
Moreover since 1873, professorships of pedagogy have 
been established in a considerable number of Ameri- 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 365 

can universities, in which instruction is given in the 
science, art, and history of education to those who 
are to become teachers in colleges and high schools, 
and it is evident that the demand for this higher and 
more scientific instruction in pedagogy is rapidly 
increasing. 

The few details that have been given concerning 
the rapid growth of professional training for teachers, 
are sufficient to show that Ratich's most valuable idea 
has borne abundant fruit in the 19th century. 

Section IV. 

We have seen that the Jesuits led the way in pro- 
viding for frequent and careful supervision of the 
work of the teachers in their schools. Such a provision 
is now acknowledged to be of a degree of importance 
second only to that of the professional training of 
teachers, since it insures that the work of the schools 
shall correspond in a good degree to whatever educa- 
tional ideal exists, and at the same time gives to 
teachers the assurance that their merits will be recog- 
nized whilst their faults will not escape notice. 

Francke and von Eochow also had supervising 
officers for their schools ; but I have at present little 
information as to the extent to which the idea of 
supervision by competejit officers had spread during 
the 18th century. It is certain that it has bec<5me a) 
marked characteristic of the school organizations of 
the present century, and that it is one to which much 
of the improvement in our popular schools is due. 
In countries like Germany and France, the system is 



366 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

elaborate, extending from a Minister of Instruction 
with his council down through provincial bodies to 
local boards, thus giving to all classes of schools a 
close and careful supervision. In England also the 
work of her Majesty's Inspectors and their reports, 
have been of such a character as to attract attention 
far beyond the bounds of Great Britain. 

In the United States where, from the too general 
lack of professional training, close supervision is most 
imperative, it has in too many cases become by no 
means effective. In most large cities and in very 
many smaller ones, there is careful local supervision, 
and its benefits are very apparent. Most, if not all of 
the States, also have State Superintendents of Instruc- 
tion under various names ; and quite a number have 
County Superintendents, but this is far from general; 
yet where such officers exist in fact as well as in name, 
the effects of their work are spoken of in high terms, 
— although in some cases, e. g. in Pennsylvania, the 
number of schools is so great as to render even annual 
visits of all the schools impossible. 

In Massachusetts, where town commissioners have 
been charged with the nominal oversight of the rural 
schools, the results have been so little satisfactory, 
that in recent years, beside six able general inspectors 
of schools, contiguous townships have been encouraged 
to unite in securing competent superintendents; and 
the last report of that State shows that twenty-five such 
superintendent-districts have been formed. 

In the State of New York, where great advances 
have been made, the supervision of rural schools has, 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHARACTEEISTICS. 367 

since 1S56, been assigned to commissioners, elected 
every three years, one, or in some cases two, from 
each Assembly District. These officers examine and 
license teachers under the direction of the State 
Superintendent, from whose office, by a recent arrange- 
ment, the examination questions emanate ; collect and 
collate the reports of the schools ; distribute the 
school moneys ; take care that the school laws are 
obeyed ; settle questions of dispute in the schools, 
subject to an appeal to the State Superintendent ; and 
usually inspect every school at least twice in the year. 

The duties here enumerated may readily be seen to 
be very important for the success of the schools, 
as well as for their effective and economical manage- 
ment ; and where such efficient provision is lacking^ 
as it still is in too many cases, there the beneficial 
returns for money expended, will be found to be 
smaller than they should be. Even skillful workmen 
are found universally to do more and better work 
with careful oversight. In teaching alone is the 
expenditure of vast sums of money to promote the 
most vital interests of society, left to the unaided dis- 
cretion of people the large majority of whom, though 
well-meaning, are young and inexperienced. Doubt- 
less the strong practical sense of the American people 
will soon correct this anomalous state of things where 
it still exists, and this correction cannot be applied 
too soon. 

Section T. 

A prominent feature in the educational activity of 
the present century is the marked attention that has- 



368 THE HISTOKY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

been paid to Industrial and Technical training, and, 
in its latest decades, also to Manual Training. It has 
come to be felt that the modes by which the arts and 
trades have hitherto been acquired through a long 
and tedious course of apprenticeship, were marked by 
much of the rudeness and the waste of time which 
characterized the mediaeval methods of instruction 
in literary subjects; and that more refined and effec- 
tive methods were especially easy of application in 
the manual arts, through clear and explicit instruc- 
tion in the ways and means of operations, to be followed 
by careful practice until skill in manipulation becomes 
habitual. 

It has become obvious that thus by systematic train- 
ing, better and more skilful artisans could be made in 
much less time, just as better physicians and lawyers 
can be educated more quickly by modern than by 
mediaeval methods. Hence in several countries tech- 
nical schools and schools of arts and trades have 
sprung up and flourished. In these it has been 
observed that, not only are the eye and the hand 
trained to observation and to executive skill, but also 
that the intellect is sharpened so as more readily and 
rapidly to grasp certain studies which are needful 
auxiliaries to technical skill. 

Hence the question has seemed naturally to emerge 
whether some training of the eye a.tid hand in the use 
of various tools, might not be made a useful auxiliary 
to the more purely literary work of all classes of 
children, whatever might be their future destination. 



NINETEENTH CENTUEY CHAEACTEEISTICS. 369 

This last is the question of manual training, now so 
much agitated, and it is in a considerable degree dis- 
tinct from the question of technical and industrial 
education ; since in the former, the training of eye 
and hand is considered more purely in its disciplinary, 
and in the latter more exclusively in its utilitarian 
aspects. 

The idea of both manual and industrial training, 
though it has come to make so prominent a figure in 
the educational history of the 19th century, is by no 
means of very recent origin. Without going back to 
the well-known industrial feature of Solon's laws, it 
will not be inappropriate to bring together in one 
view some of the more important steps in the develop- 
ment of this idea in the last three centuries. Many 
of the facts have already been mentioned in the 
previous pages. 

The earliest definite plan for an Industrial School 
that has come to my knowledge, is that of Sir Wm. 
Petty in 1647, which may be found in volume XI of 
Barnard's American Journal of Education. In this 
proposal, which was dedicated to the same Hartlib to 
whom Milton addressed his tractate on education, 
Petty gives an enumeration of the handicrafts to be 
attempted, and states the method of teaching and the 
studies which would be auxiliary to the manual arts. 
*'Let in no case, he says, the art of drawing and 
designing be omitted, to what course of life soever 
those children are to be applied; since the use thereof 
for expressing the conceptions of the mind seems, at 



370 THE HISTORY OF MODKRN EDUCATION. 

least to us, to be little inferior to that of writing, and 
in many cases performeth what by words is impos- 
sible." 

Of the advantages that he sees likely to result from 
his proposed school, some are worth quoting. " Schol- 
lers and such as love to ratiocinate will have more and 
better matter to exercise their wits upon, whereas 
now they pusle and tire themselves about meer words 
and chymericall notions." "There would not then be 
so many fustian and unworthy preachers in divinity, 
so many quack-salvers in physick, so many pettifog- 
gers in the law, so many grammaticasters in the schools, 
and so many lazy serving men in gentlemen's houses,, 
when every man might learn to live otherwise in 
plenty and honour." 

Besides these, he says, prentices would be able 
sooner to master their trades, mathematicians would 
have better subjects to investigate, physicians would 
practice their profession more wisely, and lawyers 
and divines would handle their subjects more skilfully, 
from the knowledge which such training imparts. 
He alleges also the lively interest which both boys 
and 'girls have in doing and the means of doing, as a 
reason why such exercises should be set them, " as 
more suitable to the natural propensions we see in 
them." All this savors strongly of the modern advo- 
cates of manual training. 

Still earlier than this project of Petty, Comenius 
had suggested that in his vernacular, i. e., elementary 
schools, " a general knowledge of the mechanic arts 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 371 

should be given, that boys may better understand the 
affairs of ordinary life, and that opportunities may be 
thus given them to find out their special ajptitudesP 
We have also seen that near the close of the lYth 
century Mme. deMaintenon at St. Cyr laid great stress 
on feminine handicrafts, as had long been done in 
convents, considering " manual labor a moral safe- 
guard and a protection against sin ; " that Locke in 
1692 insists that gentlemen should learn some trade 
in order to develop constructive power ; and that in 
1Y62 Rousseau emphasizes the same idea, giving as a 
reason that it would afford a resource in unlocked for 
misfortunes, and even illustrating this idea by causing 
his Emile to become a captive and slave where his 
manual skill proves a means of influence. 

In 1771, Kindermann, later bishop of Leitmeritz, 
became practically the " Father of Industrial Educa- 
tion," by introducing into the schools of his Bohemian 
parish female handiwork for girls, and for boys prac- 
tical instruction in the rural occupations of the 
neighborhood. These he used because he saw that 
thereby he enlisted the interest of children and 
parents in his schools, and thus promoted their liter- 
ary efficiency. 

In 1775 and also at a later period, Pestalozzi, as we 
have seen, undertook to unite the training of the 
senses, the mind, and the hand, and even fancied that 
poor children might be able to pay by their manual 
dexterity the expenses of their nurture and training. 

In "The Education of Man," Froebel in 1826 



•3Y2 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

€mphasized the need that the child " be trained early 
for outer work, for creative and productive activity," 
as a needful means for his complete development ; and 
he says, " it would be a most wholesome arrangement 
in schools to establish actual working hours similar to 
the existing study hours, and it will surely come to 
this." Three years later, he pushed this idea farther 
by proposing to found such a school, in which the 
morning hours should be devoted to study, and the 
afternoon to varied work adapted to a wide range of 
local circumstances and wants. His well-known 
Kindergarten, founded in 1840, embodied this with 
other fruitful ideas, since it sought to develop manual 
capability in children whilst training the senses and 
instilling the germs of moral ideas. 

In 1866, wood-working under the name of slojd is 
said to have been made compulsory in the schools of 
Finland ; and Sweden and Denmark seem thence to 
have derived the idea which other nations know chiefly 
from Sweden, Two years later, Cornell University 
opened its technical training department, and in the 
«ame year Victor Delia Yoss in Moscow solved the 
problem of manual instruction in classes. Dr. John 
Runkle in 1877 introduced this system in Boston ; and 
since then, few meetings of teachers or school super- 
intendents have failed to hear urged its claims, its 
merits, and its methods, and many schools upon this 
plan have been organized in cities. 

France has gone farther than any other nation in 
the direction of manual training, since in 1882 a decree 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 373 

was passed, devoting to it two to three hours per 
week for youth between the ages of seven and thirteen, 
prescribing a graded series of work ending with the 
use of wood-working tools and the simpler means of 
fashioning iron, and making such changes in the 
course of the normal schools as to fit teachers to give 
instruction in the use of tools. 

Such then in brief is a sketch of the progressive 
development of the idea of industrial and manual 
training during the past two and a half centuries. As 
it is now urged by its most prominent advocates, 
manual training, sharply distinguished from indus- 
trial education, bases its claims chiefly on its value as 
a discipline, in giving interest and meaning to other 
school studies; in begetting respect for labor; in 
revealing while developing inherent aptitudes, thus 
widening the range of choice for a vocation ; and in 
fostering the feeling of independence by a conscious- 
ness of the ability of self-support. 

These are certainly weighty advantages; and, if 
experience shows that they can be widely realized, 
the movement will doubtless commend itself to the 
careful consideration of all progressive educators. 
The movement has encountered a vigorous opposition, 
and it is at present too much in the experimental 
stage to permit any decisive judgment as to its merits 
and its general feasibility. It is sufiicient for our 
present purpose to indicate it, in connection with 
industrial and technical training, as one of the marked 
features of the educational history of the 19th century. 



374 THE HISTOEY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

Section YI. 

In studying the history of education in the lYth and 
18th centuries, we have had occasion to examine the 
principles of the educational reformers, and to call 
attention to the causes that were likely to retard their 
acceptance in practice. It has been very obvious that 
these causes have actually so operated,— that, though 
the fundamental principles of right education which 
Comenius formulated were accepted and illustrated 
wholly or in part by many of the best minds in both 
centuries, they still remained too largely mere literary 
embodiments of ideas that had little influence on the 
inner life of the schools ; that the actual schoolmaster, 
wedded to his traditional routine, knew little and 
cared less about better methods of teaching ; and that 
hence no considerable advance had been made in 
reducing to practice the reformatory ideas, save in 
some isolated instances. 

Francke had indeed done something, and von Ko- 
chow more ; Basedow had, even in the failure which 
his idiosyncracies courted, attracted great public 
attention to an experiment illustrating better and 
more productive methods of training the young ; and 
all these had doubtless contributed to the work of 
putting the public mind in that expectant and recep- 
tive attitude to which Dr. Dittes ascribes the remark- 
able effects of Pestalozzi's flamming enthusiasm and 
self-devotion. From this cause, and from the politi- 
cal condition of Germany in the first decade of this 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHAEACTERISTICS. 375 

century, the reformatory movement was henceforth 
to centre about Pestalozzi and to bear his name. 

Against this movement thus reinforced, the stolid 
conservatism of the school-master has proved power- 
less. All the new educational agencies which the 
19th century has created, have aided in disseminating 
and giving effect to the reformatory ideas, and have 
gained from them their chief significance. The newly- 
created normal schools and other agencies for train- 
ing teachers have inculcated these principles in the 
new generation of teachers; the associations of teach- 
ers have impressed them by iteration on the careless 
and reluctant ; the various governments have first 
adapted the organization proposed by Comenius to 
their own special needs, and have then enforced the 
practice of his ideas by the agencies of supervision 
through which they reach every school ; the pedagogic 
activity of the century, through treatises, lectures, and 
essays, through text-books and reports, has carried 
everywhere the inspiration of the ideas of the reform- 
ers under their Pestalozzian name ; and hence all these 
agencies are conspiring to make the universal spread 
of education a means of intellectual happiness to the 
young, instead of an ingenious device for inflicting on 
youth the ennui and torture which once characterized 
schools. 

Like so many other educational improvements, Pes- 
talozzianism gained its first hearty recognition in Ger- 
many, and spread thence into other lands, until now the 
school practice of all Europe and America is becoming 



376 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

to an increasing extent influenced thereby. Every- 
where methods are becoming more objective and 
observational ; everywhere it is understood that teach- 
ing, to be successful, must seek the stand-point of the 
pupil's experience, and advance thence by steps 
adapted to his powers ; it is generally acknowledged 
that memory should be the hand-maid of understand- 
ing, and that the intellectual activity of the pupil is 
the essential condition of the development of his 
powers ; and enlightened educators everywhere recog- 
nize that the short-comings of the schools and the 
lack of vital interest in pupils, are due to the neglect 
or imperfect application of these principles. 

It must, liowever, be confessed that skill in the 
application of sound educational maxims is still far 
less general than recognition of their value. This is 
especially true in our own country, because of the 
shortness of service and the imperfect training of the 
body of teachers. Yet the general acceptance of 
sound doctrine is a fact of vast importance, and is, 
likely to lead finally to better practice. In educational 
periodicals and associations, there has been, within 
the past few years, a noticeable increase in the amount 
of judicious suggestion on methods of teaching various 
subjects ; but with possibly a tendency to confound 
certain special modes of doing things with the funda- 
mental methods of subjects. 

English-speaking peoples have been more backward 
than the Germans or the French in recognizing the 
importance of the vernacular in instruction. Within 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 37Y 

the past few years, however, a great change in this 
respect has been perceptible in the United States 
through an influence proceeding from our higher cen- 
tres of learning. Perfunctory reading exercises in 
which ready recognition of words is cared for more 
than sense, and barren grammar lessons in which the 
substance of the language is subordinated to a more 
conscious knowledge of its form, are now largely felt 
to be very insufficient ; and at present it is not uncom- 
mon to find in educational periodicals, disquisitions 
on the teaching of English, its literature, and its 
historic development, side by side with essays on 
modes of presenting Latin and modern languages. 

Objective and laboratory methods of teaching the 
sciences of nature, are zealously urged in place of the 
too prevalent study ahout things in books. The pre- 
vailing German metliod of teaching these sciences, it 
may be said, is by lessons thoroughly illustrated by 
observation of things and by well-chosen experiments ; 
and should we succeed in supplementing this instruc- 
tion, in schools below the college, by series of labora- 
tory exercises in which students themselves do the 
work, we shall probably be ahead of most of the world 
in the application of the principle " to learn by doing." 

This principle is unquestionably sound, whatever 
difficulties may be encountered in its complete appli- 
cation with large bodies of students. It is doubtless 
easier to be applied in the teaching of languages than 
of science, from the nature of the subject-matter, and 
hence we shall not be surprised to find that more than 



3Y8 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

one new method of teaching languages has claimed 
the public confidence during this century. 

In the first half of the century, the systems of Hamil- 
ton and Jacotot attracted much attention. The first, 
devised by James Hamilton, an English merchant, 
professed to give a fair degree of mastery of a lan- 
guage in an incredibly short time, through an inter- 
linear translation of some familiar work, in which the 
2>rimitive meanings of all the foreign words, even in 
idiomatic expressions, should be strictly adhered to, and 
the force of the inflected forms should be expressed ; 
and through the repeated use of whatever was thus 
learned. This curious modification of the method of 
Comenius and of a suggestion of Locke, was intro- 
duced first in New York in 1815, and later in Eng- 
land, making for a time a good deal of noise ; but 
after the death of its author in 1831, it sunk out of 
sight. It was significant chiefly as a reaction against 
the old grammatical system of teacliing languages. 

The method of the Frenchman Jacotot who died in 
181:0, if we may judge of it from the presentation 
given by his enthusiastic admirer and expounder, 
Joseph Payne, had much more both of originality 
and merit than that of Hamilton, besides being appli- 
cable to other things than language. Its cliief maxim 
he thus expressed, — " II faut apprendre quelque chose, 
et y rapporter tout le reste," which may be translated, 
— ^' Master whatever you learn and proceed by the 
method of comparison." 

That this was the real import of his seemingly 
incomplete maxim, is shown by the four explanatory 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHAKAOTEEISTICS. 379 

words which he added to it, viz., learn, repeat, com- 
pare, verify, i. e., learn thoroughly ; repeat often for 
sure memory ; compare, to discriminate, systematize, 
and generalize, thus assuring clear and distinct ideas ; 
verify by bringing principles to the test of facts, and 
by assuring the value of facts as organizable parts of 
a system of thought by bringing them under the 
principle to which they belong. Explained thus, the 
method of Jacotot is quite as applicable to science and 
history as to language which he had specially in view. 
Its chief merit lies in the demands which it makes 
upon the intellectual activity of the pupil in compari- 
son and verification. 

In the last half of thecentur}^ we also hear much 
of the " Natural Method " of learning languages, by 
whicli should be meautthe nearest practicable approx- 
imation to the way in which a child learns his vernac- 
ular, that is to say, by imitation and use. For school 
use, various systems have been devised to facilitate 
the acquisition of the words, idioms, and variable 
forms of language, and to accustom pupils to think 
and express thought with the new signs for ideas. 

So far as they are helpful, all these systems must 
depend on the frequent and varied use of a growing 
stock of words and forms of expression, conformed to 
the principles of the given language. Inasmuch as 
they attack the grammar through the medium of the 
language, and master its forms and principles only so 
fast as they are needed, they are certainly more 
natural pedagogically than the method of approach- 



380 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

ing the language through the grammar which they 
have so Largely superseded. 

Meanwhile these methods and the others that have 
been mentioned, owe their interest to us in this con- 
nection by no means wholly to their own intrinsic 
merits as improvements, but in an even higher degree 
to the testimony that they bear to the influence of the 
reformatory ideas in educational practice. Previous 
ages had shown little practical disposition to inquire 
about modes of procedure in instruction, and still less 
to devise and test new ones. The improvements that 
were made were limited in extent and limited in 
range of influence. Sound theories of education had 
far outstripped any effort to realize them in practice. 
The 19th century has shown a disposition to change 
all this ; and besides, whatever of substantial improve- 
ment has been made reaches downward to the entire 
body of youth, instead of being limited to the small 
numbers in higher institutions. 

In one highly important practical respect most 
schools are still far too backward. They regard their 
work too exclusively as instruction and too little as 
education, the development of inner worthiness of 
character. And yet, under conditions such as now 
tend to become prevalent throughout the civilized 
world, in which the will of the body of the people is 
becoming the real governing power, it is obvious that 
a well-balanced character and an illuminated conscience 
are vitally essential correlates of an intelligence trained 
and informed. 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 381 

From this defect in education spring many public 
and private evils of which we hear constant and bitter 
complaints. The public schools, having the charge 
of youth at the most plastic age, when character may 
most easily be shaped, present the most effective 
agency by which these evils may gradually be cor- 
rected ; but to do this, they must train and educate 
more, while not instructing less, or rather they must 
aim to educate through instruction and discipline. 

Discipline also needs to be regarded, no longer in 
its lowest aspect as a means for preserving tolerable 
order in schools, but as a powerful agent for the 
guidance of the feelings and the will, for training to 
honorable and upright conduct, and for assuring cor- 
rect moral estimates of actions. When these are 
assured, religious instruction will find something in 
the experiences of youth with which to build ; for 
while religion forms the only sure basis for character, 
like other educative agencies, it must work with 
materials which the individual experience furnishes, 
in order to assure reliable results. 

In speaking of the improvements in educational 
practice which tlie 19th century has initiated, we can- 
not fail to remark one of its most brilliant and prom- 
ising achievements, in the systematic direction of the 
playful instincts of young childhood by Froebel and 
his disciples. That the plays of children should be 
made even more amusing and inspiring to them by a 
regulated association with their equals in age; and 
that, by a wise guidance in an affectionate spirit, 



382 THE HISTOKY OF MODERN EDrCATION. 

their efforts for amusement should be made effective 
in developing their physical capabilities, their senses, 
their feelings, and their intelligence, was certainly a 
wise and benevolent application of an idea which 
Quintillian dimly conceived, which Comenius pro- 
posed, and which Pestalozzi always cherished. 

It is meeting with wide acceptance in both Europe 
and America ; and, if used in a proper spirit as a 
means of healthful childish development, and not to 
promote mere precocity, it offers a cheering prospect 
for that future better condition of the race for which 
Kant looked. We ought to be able to expect from it 
the measurable correction of some of the evils which 
writers on education have in all ages deplored, — evils 
resulting from undirected or misdirected youthful 
activities, and from deplorable but indelible immoral 
impressions made upon plastic childish minds. 

Section YII. 

The Greek writers who treated of education laid 
great stress on the educational effects of music, as did 
all their countrymen, and the Koman writers repeat 
their opinions without any considerable practical sym- 
pathy with them. But from the fall of the Roman 
Empire down to the 19th century, comparatively little 
seems to have been thought or said about the purely 
disciplinary value of studies. When men contended 
about what should be taught to youth, their interest 
was centered on the merit or absurdity of studies in a 
literary point of view, on their intrinsic value as 
matters of knowledge or opinion, or on the manner in 



NINEl'EENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 383 

which they might affect accepted religious beliefs. 
Latin was regarded as a necessary means for gaining 
knowledge, of which it was the accepted vehicle. 
Greek and Hebrew were to be mastered because in 
them was embodied the word of God. 

Great stress was laid on useful knowledge, with a 
growing tendency in later periods to attribute greater 
utility to some kinds of knowledge than to others ; 
but the effect of studies in developing the powers of 
those who mastered them was tacitly assumed rather 
than strongly emphasized. Certain unfavorable results 
of a too exclusive devotion to mathematics were, how- 
ever, pointed out by Descartes and others. Certainly 
there is shown no disposition to bring into comparison 
and relative valuation various studies as means for 
disciplining the powers. 

In so far as the efforts of the Innovators were 
directed to studies, they aimed to select such as would 
be most obviously useful to pupils in the course of 
life to which they were destined ; where their atten- 
tion was directed to a reform of methods of teaching 
by securing conformity to nature, they recognized an 
order in which subjects enlist the interest of children, 
and in which therefore they may most successfully 
be taught, but with little effort to estimate the special 
formal efficiency of this or that group of studies in- 
cultivating certain forms of mental power or moral 
worth. 

During the current centuty, there has obviously 
been a great change in this respect. There has been 



384: THE HISTORY OF MODEKN EDUCATION. 

a great increase in the subjects of lively human inter- 
est and important human use ; and a still greater 
increase in the volume of knowledge that is available 
for the purposes of education. An intolerable pressure 
has thus been brought to bear upon all kinds of 
educational institutions, and educators have been 
forced to face the question of a selection among many 
desirable subjects of study. 

We are in a period, therefore, in which it becomes 
imperative to take careful account of our pedagogic 
stock in trade, to consider all subjects dispassionately, 
and to so rearrange our programmes of instruction as 
to attempt only the practicable, while conforming 
them both to the present condition of culture and to 
the laws of growing mind. 

In this readjustment, not only the classics are to be 
weighed which have long had a settled place, and the 
mathematics which during recent ages have won for 
themselves increased consideration ; but also modern 
languages and their literature, history with the great 
increments of value which it has received from later 
investigations, and the sciences of nature which are 
so largely the growth of the 19th century. Connected 
with these last as intimately allied to them, are the 
sciences of man, psychology and ethics, both as sub- 
jects to be reckoned with in the selection of studies, 
and as indispensable aids in the solution of the prob- 
lems which selection and arrangement present. 

In all such periods of readjustment, two parties of 
diametrically opposite tendencies are sure to make 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHAKACTERISTICS. 385 

their appearance ; the Conservatives, wedded to that 
to which they are accustomed, deprecating any change, 
and ingenious to find reasons why there should be 
none, are certain to forebode dire disaster as the 
result of innovations on what the past has consecrat- 
•ed ; whilst the Kadicals, zealous for a thorough reform, 
would sweep clean the ground, and build anew with 
fresh and often little-tested materials which they see 
the most convincing reasons for employing. 

Between these opposing parties and their views, 
the contest is sure to be warm if not embittered ; but 
from their struggle the truth is pretty sure ultimately 
to emerge triumphant, though usually, for reasons 
that have before been given in a different connection, 
the victory is apt to be slow in declaring itself. Thus, 
at the beginning of the Kenaissance period, we have 
witnessed the long and envenomed contest which 
scholasticism and its methods waged against the new 
spirit of the age with its better subjects and its newly- 
devised modes of presentation ; and we have been 
taught by this to expect that changes, to be most 
beneficial, must be slowly wrought. 

The problem which is presented to the 19th century 
is by no means so simple as that which the Middle 
Ages offered to the newer time. Then the lines could 
be sharply drawn between scholasticism and the 
humanities. Now the conflicting, and in some cases, 
exclusively urged claims of four great groups of 
studies are to be duly weighed and carefully adjusted. 
It is evident therefore that the problem is a delicate 



386 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

one, and needs to be approached in a wise and judicial 
spirit, — a spirit which would not needlessly reject 
the old because it is old, nor accept the new because 
it has the charm of novelty, but would judge, decide,, 
and readjust with all the aids which the advancing 
science of man, and especially of the young man, can 
bring to a consideration so important. • 

It needs hardly to be said that the educators of the- 
19th century have attacked this problem with great 
zeal and vigor ; it is to be regretted that it can not 
also be said that they have generally striven impar- 
tially to reach the truth rather than to sustain a 
preconceived opinion. A marked and most interest- 
ing feature of this " Conflict of Studies " has been a 
general disposition to discuss the various groups of 
studies, not merely in their material, but also in their 
formal aspect, — not to be content only with display- 
ing the utility of some favored subjects, but to show 
how far and to what purpose they train the faculties 
of the growing youth to use all knowledge most 
effectively. 

Thus we have already seen that Herbert Spencer, 
in urging the superior claims of sciences in education, 
does not deem it sufficient to illustrate what he thinks 
the superior utility of science for the right conduct of 
life, but goes on to show in what respects its disci- 
plinary value is great. Thus Sir "William Hamilton, 
in his trenchant criticism of the study of mathematics,^ 
says "The question does not regard the value of 

*Edinburg Review, Jan., 1836. 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 387 

mathematical science considered in itself or in its 
objective results, but the utility of mathematical study 
in its subjective effects, as an exercise of the mind ; '^ 
and he limits himself to proving that "none of our 
intellectual studies tends to cultivate a smaller number 
of faculties in a more partial or feeble manner than 
mathematics." The touchstone that he applies is 
wholly formal and disciplinary efficacy. 

In like manner the advocates of the classic languages 
— and they have been many — abandoning as no longer 
tenable the ground on which Montaigne and Locke 
considered Latin necessary for a gentleman, and on 
which Comenius and Milton proposed easier and 
speedier means for its mastery,— that is, the ground 
that it was indispensable as a medium through which 
to learn things useful , — have been ingenious, not merely 
in urging other and higher utilities, but also in setting 
forth its wide range of formal efficiency in the devel- 
opment of the faculties and capacities of youth. 

This change in the point of view from which all 
studies are considered to an increasing degree in the 
19th century, is chiefly significant because it marks a 
revulsion from the bald utilitarianism of the middle 
and later ages, to the true Christian ideal of education^ 
the noble humanitarian ideal which looks upon the 
infinite worth of man as the destined heir of immor- 
tality as far more important than any of the temporary 
and earthly uses of his activities, and hence regards his 
development to the full perfection of his nature as- 
the chief purpose of education. 



'388 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

Thus the historic races, after groping long for the 
tjhief end of man, — after seeking it in devotion to 
family, or caste, or state, in duty or utility, or in a 
meditative self-abnegation which aims to become 
more than man by being less through neglect of present 
•duties,— are finding it at length in the duty of striv- 
ing for the perfection of human nature, as a corollary 
of the truth, so long ago proclaimed by Christ, of the 
worth of the human personality. 

Vigorous as have been the discussions concerning 
the relative value and the disciplinary efficiency of 
studies which this century has witnessed in all civil- 
ized countries, nowhere have such discussions been 
conducted with greater ardor than in Germany, and 
nowhere on the whole in a broader and more philo- 
sophic spirit. It must be confessed, however, that 
■sometimes an un philosophic heat has been displayed, 
^nd that somewhat too often, such illogical ad captan- 
dum phrases as " disinterested studies," and " Ameri- 
canization of studies," have been used, — as though 
studies valuable for discipline were any less valuable 
because they happen to be useful, — or as though allu- 
■sionsto the possible crudities in thought or practice of 
a people engaged in taming a vast new country, had 
any place in a grave educational discussion. 

This discussion has had the form of a struggle 
between the respective advocates of the Gymnasien 
and the Real-Schulen, and has been correlated with 
successive readjustments, of the programmes of these 
;great secondary schools. In these readjustments, one of 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 389" 

whicli is even now in progress in Prussia, the disinter- 
ested observer may see a wise practical effort to give 
due weight to all the great groups of studies, viz.^ 
mathematics, history, the sciences, and languages, 
among which the vernacular is gaining a large place 

The struggle has not yet reached a definitive ter- 
mination, but Professor Paulsen of Berlin, in his- 
recent '' History of Learned Instruction in Germany,"" 
regards the tendencies of the movement as sufiiciently 
marked to justify a prediction as to its future course. 
He predicts that in the future Greek is likely to be 
relegated to the list of occasionally chosen electives;^^ 
that Latin may retain its place, but in a more restricted 
form ; that the time thus gained will be given, in 
part at least, to a more fruitful study of the vernacu- 
lar and its literature in their historic development ; 
and that there is likely to be a renewal of attention 
to the sciences of man, — philosophy and logic, ethics- 
and politics. Of other groups of studies he says little,, 
evidently taking for granted that they have conquered 
for themselves an amount of recognition that is not 
likely to grow less. The recent course of events- 
seems already to promise a verification of his prophecy,, 
at least in some particulars. 

Whatever may be the final outcome of the contro- 
versy long waged between the humanists and the- 
scientists, each party looking exclusively at one side 
of a great complex truth, — the world has thereby had 
impressed upon it the fact that all studies, rightly 
pursued, have a value to the student transcending^ 



390 THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 

their mere utility ; and the distinct recognition which 
the 19th century has thus given to the humanitarian 
idea in education, may justly be considered the crown- 
ing point of its educational history. For, when we 
have solved the question how to make a man of the 
greatest worth in himself, then it will be found that 
both these other weighty questions are also solved, 
viz., how shall a man be made most useful ? and, 
what knowledge is of most worth ? That man will be 
most useful who has grown most completely up to the 
full measure of his powers : that knowledge will be 
of most worth, which, while ministering to his growth, 
has, by dint of thinking, been so incorporated with 
his entire series of experiences as to be in the fullest 
sense usable. 

So far as I can judge, we have now surveyed the 
educational progress of the 19th century in the several 
aspects which will be likely most forcibly to impress 
the future historian. Should specimens of our peda- 
gogical treatises, essays, and periodicals, of our pro- 
ceedings, reports, and text-books, fall into the hands 
of the historian of some coming century, in any 
reasonably complete form, he will doubtless credit us 
with a degree of literary activity in the realm of ped- 
agogy hitherto unprecedented, — while possibly expres- 
sing some mild surprise that we apparently laid so 
much stress on text-books. He will be likely to remark 
that our essays towards a consistent organization of 
schools, were creditable for an age relatively so little 
enlightened. He will call attention to the fact that 



NINETEENTH CENTURY CHARACTERISTICS. 391 

in the 19th century, education, from being the privi- 
lege of the few, was made the prerogative of the 
masses of the people ; while possibly mentioning, as a 
remarkable illustration of the lingering rudeness of 
manners, the fact that it was in some cases found 
necessary to force so precious a boon as education on 
unwilling recipients. He will give due praise to our 
efforts in the nearly new field of training teachers for 
their profession, and of providing for some supervis- 
ion of their work. He will probably give us credit 
for making a tolerable attempt, to train hands and 
eyes as well as mind, to provide for technical educa- 
tion, and to supersede by trades' schools the rude 
method of apprenticeship. He may possibly note 
that we made some observable progress in educa- 
tional practice, but will be quite as likely to wonder 
that we did not make a more complete use of the rich 
stores of sound educational theory that were ready at 
■our hands. And finally, should he think it worth his 
while to read as matters of antiquarian curiosity our 
eager disputes over questions which to him have 
assumed the character of axioms, he may chance to 
observe that the 19th century seemed to be dimly dis- 
covering the lofty humanitarian ideal which had been 
announced by the founder of its religion, and on 
which his more-favored age is acting with clear con- 
sciousness of its demands. 



IKDEX. 



American Education, early, 222, 327 
Arnauld, Antoine, 167 

Ascham, Roger, 97 

Associations of teachers, 348 



English Secondary Education, 

32, 318 
Epistles of obscure men, 27 

Erasmus, 52 

Ernesti and the new humanism. 



Bacon, Sir Francis, 115 




249 


Bain, Alexander, 336 






Barnard, Henry, 347 


Fables of Fenelon, 


210 


Basedow, 288 


Felbiger, J. I. von, 


325 


Brothers of the Christian Schools, 


Female Education, 


103, 197, 204 


227 


Fenelon, 


202, 207 


Burgdorf, 305 


Fleury, 


118 




Francke, 


233 


Colet and St, Paul's School, 26 


French Education, 


227, 318, 372 


Columbia College, 329, 330 


Froebel, 


335, 352, 372, 381 



Comenius, John A., 148 

eompayre, 336, 342 

Compulsory Education, 40, 354 

Conformity to Culture, idea of, 47 
Conformity to Nature in Studies, 

47, 126 
Conventual Education, 197, 203 

Culttrre Value of Studies, 334, 382 



Descartes, 
Dialogues of the dead, 



115 
211 



Ecclesiasticiem in Education, 113 
Education.— H. Spencer, 337 

Education des Filles,— Fenelon, 202 
Education, over-estimates of, 

153, 183, 291, 296 
Education, popular, 324, 349 

Emile, Rousseau— defects of 266 
Emile, its chief merits, 265, 272 

England, Education in, 32, 226, 318 



Gargantua— Rabelais, 69 

Gedike, reasons for the human- 
ities, 251 
Germany, Education in, 

34, 228, 321, 350 
German Secondary Schools, 

34, 249, 321 
Gesner and the new humanism, 249 
Goettingen and the new human- 
ism, 245, 250 
Greek in Schools, 20, 288, 389 
Guudling and the new University 
Spirit, 248 

Halle, rise and influence of, 234, 248 
Hamilton's (Jas.) Method, 378 

Harvard, 224 

Hecker, J. J. and real Schools, 240 
Heyne in Goettingen, 251 

History, Teaching of, 205, 211, 259 



39-i 



THE HISTORY OF MODERN EDUCATION. 



Humanistic Education, 19, 29, 90 
Humanitarian ideal of Education, 

387, 390 
Humanism, the new, 249, 322 

Jacotot and his method, 378 

Janua Linguarum — Comenius, 1G2 
Jesuit Schools, 103 

St. Jerome on Education of girls, 

197 

Kant and his ideas on Education, 

279 
Kindergarten, 35G, 381 

Kindermann and Industrial Edu- 
cation, 321, 371 

Lambert, Mme. de, 206 

Lamy, 220 

La Salle, 227 

Latin in Schools, 

157, IGO, 167, 175, 191, 258, 389 

Leonard and Gertrude— Pestalozzi, 

302 

Locke, John. 181 

Luther, Martin, 40, 48 

Magna Didactica— Comenius, 164 
Maintenon. Mme. de, 200 

Mann, Horace, 347 

Manual Training, 

157, 193, 274, 334, 368 
Maria Theresa, 320 

Massachusetts, 224, 364, 366 

Melanchthon, 84 

Milton, John, 171 

Money, relative value of, 4, 99 

Montaigne, 74 

Mulcaster, Richard, 98 

Natural method in Languages, 379 

Neander, Michael, 95 

Neuhof— Pestalozzi, 301 

Nicole, 167 

New Humanism, 249 
New York, Education, 

223, 329, 351, 362, 366 



Normal Schools, 



243, 321, 364 



Object Lessons proposed by Rollin, 

260 
Observation, training of, 129, 160, 273 
Obstacles to Educational reform, 

134 
Oratory of Jesus, 217 

Orbis Pictus— Comenius, 161 

Payne, Joseph, 336 

Pedagogic Seminar— Gesner, 245 
Pestalozzi, his principles, 299, 312, 375 
Petty, Sir Wm., 193, 369 

Philanthropinum, 290 

Philosphers, influence in Educa- 
tion, 115 
Pietists, 232, 237 
Positions— Mulcaster, 99 
Port Royal, 166 
Princely Education in France, 209 
Princeton, College of. New Jer- 
sey, 329 

Rabelais. 68 

Ramus, 63 

Ratich, 140 

Real School, rise of, 129, 238 

Reformers of Education, princi- 
ples of, 126, 374 
Reuchlin^ 27 
Rochow, von, and rural Schools, 326 
Rollin, 253 
Rosmini, 33i3 
Rousseau, 261 

Sadolet, Abp. and compulsory 

Education, 43 

Schoolmaster— Ascham, 97 

School Organization, 87, 91, 154, 351 
Scotland, Education in, 229 

Secondary Schools, growth of 32 
Semler, Christoph, 239 

Senses, training of, 153, 260, 273 

Spencer, Herbert, 337 

Spener, P. J., 232 

StauB,- Pestalozzi, 304 



INDEX. 



395 



States General on Comijuleory 

Education, 43 

Studies, readjustment of, 384 

Sturm, Johann, 88 

Supervision of Schools, 107, 333, 3G5 



Utilitarianism in Education, 131 
University of Pennsylvania, 330 

University Spirit, modern, rise of, 

247 
University of State of New York, 330 



Teaching as an Art — Ratich, 145 

Teacher, ideal of,— Locke, 185 

Teachers' Seminaries, 242, 360 

Teachers' Institutes, 363 

Teachers, Training of, 

105, 227, 23G, 241, 333, 300 
Text-books, American, 327 

Thomassin, 221 

Thoughts on Education— Locke, 181 
Traite des Etudes— Kollin, 254 

Trotzendorf, Valentine, 93 



Vernacular in Instruction. 

128, 256, 323, 376 
Vives, Ludovico, 60 

William and Mary College, 222 

SVolf, Christian, 248 

Wolf, F. A., 251 



Yale College, 
Yverduu, 



329 
305 



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perusal of this yfov'k.—Scie7ice, June 7, 1889. 

The work is a timely reminder how far we have strayed in following the 
deity of "examination," which should have been kept in its place as the 
liandmaid of education.— 77if Schoolmaster, London, Feb. 16, 1889. 

S. Pestalozzi and Pestalozzianism. By R. H. Quick. Paper, 16mo, pp. 
40, 15cts. 

This is a reprint from Quick's Educational Reformers, and contains the 
best brief abstract that has ever been written. 

5. The Pestalozzian Series of Arithmetics. Teachers' Manual and First- 
Tear Text-Book for pupils in the first grade. Based upon Pestalozzi's 
method of teaching Elementary Nimiber. By James H. Hoose. Boards, 
16mo, 2 editions. PuplVs Edition, pp. 156, 35 cts. Teacher's Edition, contain- 
ing the former, with additional matter, pp. 217, .50 cts. 

This is a practical exposition of the Pestalozzian Method, and has met 
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first developed, but in many other leading schools, a.s at Gloversville, Baby- 
lon, etc. It is diametrically opposed to the Grube Method, and good teach- 
ers should be familiar with both, that ttiey may choose intelligently between 
them. 

h. Lessons in Number, as given in a Pestalozzian School, Cheam, Surrey. 
The Master's Manual. By C. Eeiner. Cloth, 16mo, pp. 224. $1.50. 

5. Lessons in Form, or, an Introduction to Geometry as given in a Pesta- 
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Both 4 and 5 in one volume, $2.00. 

These works were prepared in 1835 under the supervision of Dr. C. Mayo 
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Froebel and the Kindergarten. 

1. Autobiography of Fried'fich FroeM. Translated and annotated by 
Emily Michaelis and II. Keatly Moore. Cloth, iSmo, pp. 183. $1.50. 

Useful and interesting * * * among the best that could be added to 
the teacher's library.— r^ Chautauquan, Oct., 1889, 

There is no better introduction to the Kindergarten.— ■pTwwn^m Journal 
of Education., Sept., 1889, 

It is a book which can be trusted to make its oymwsiY.— The Independent, 
Oct. 10, 1.889. 

These two books [Froebel and Pestalozzi] recently from the press of the 
enterprising and discriminating house of C. W. Bardeen, are the last and not 
the least important contribution to American pedagogical literature. The 
professional library is incomplete without ihQm.— Canada School JournaL 
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2. Child and Child-Nature, Contributions to the understanding of 
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It is a fit companion to the Autobiography and the two are published in 
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Its design is to illustrate the theory and philosophy of Froebel's system. 
It does this so clearly and pleasingly as to give no excuse for criticism. * * 
* * The volume is one profitable for every mother, as well as every teacher 
of (MlL^v^v^.-sChicago Interocean., Sept. 14, 1889. 

3. The First Three Years of ChildJwod. By B. Perez, with an Intro- 
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The eminent English psychologist, Prof. Sully says that Perez combines 
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American edition issued.— Journal of Pedagogy, April, 1889. 

A. The Kindergarten System. Principles of Froebel's System, and their 
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The Orbis Pictus of Comeniusi 

This beautiful volume, (Cloth, 
8vo, large paper, top-edge gilt, 
others uncut, pp. 197, $3.00) is a 
reprint of the English edition of 
1727, hut with reproduction of the 
151 copper-cut illustrations of the 
original edition of 1658. A copy 
of the rare original commands 
a hundred dollars, and this re- 
print must be considered the 
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It was not only the first book 
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EXTEACTS FROM CRITICISMS. 

The book is a beautiful piece of work, and in every way superior to 
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C. W. Bardeen, of Syracuse, has placed lovers of quaint old books un- 
der obligation to him.— iV. Y. Sun. 

We welcome this resurrection of the Orbis Pictus SensucUum Pictus^ 
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enius, the prince of European educators in the 17th century, was the 
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Comenius's latest editor and publisher has therefore given us both a 
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The old wood illustrations are reproduced with absolute fidelity by a 
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Every educational library must have a copy of the book, if it wishes to 
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take our copy unless we are sure we can replace it— Educational Courant. 

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